UC-NRLF 


No.  S.  E.  1 


HN 


THE  SOCIAL  SURVEY 


Papers  by 

PAUL  U.  KELLOGG 
SHELBY    M.    HARRISON 
GEORGE  T.  PALMER 


REPRINTED   FROM 

THE  PROCEEDINGS  OF 

THE  ACADEMY  OF  POLITICAL  SCIENCE 

VOLUME  II.     No.  4 

JULY,  igi2 


SECOND  EDITION 


DEPARTMENT  OF  SURVEYS  AND  EXHIBITS 
RUSSELL  SAGE  FOUNDATION 

128  EAST  TWENTY-SECOND  STREET,   NKW  YORK. 


GIFT   OF 


f ' 


f 


THE  SOCIAL  SURVEY 


Papers  by 

PAUL  U.  KELLOGG 
SHELBY    M.    HARRISON 
GEORGE  T.  PALMER 


REPRINTED   FROM 

THE  PROCEEDINGS  OF 

THE  ACADEMY  OF  POLITICAL  SCIENCE 

VOLUME  II.    No.  4 

JULY,  1912 


DEPARTMENT  OF  SURVEYS  AND  EXHIBITS 
RUSSELL  SAGE  FOUNDATION 


128  EAST  TWENTY-SECOND  STREET,   NEW  YORK. 


\ 

XN 


The  Spread  of  the  Survey  Idea1 

PAUL  U.  KELLOGG 
Director  of  the  Pittsburgh  Survey,  1907-09 

IN  most  of  our  social  movements,  we  are  under  the  necessity 
of  starting  something  going.  We  must  stir  up  interest  as 
the  first  step.  The  survey  movement,  if  we  can  call  it  that, 
does  not  seem  to  be  handicapped  in  this  way.  There  is  more 
spontaneous  outcropping  of  the  survey  idea  the  country  round 
than  as  yet  we  have  any  sufficient  organization  or  body  of 
trained  workers  to  deal  with.  Close  on  the  heels  of  Pittsburgh 
came  Buffalo.  The  pioneer  work  in  the  steel  district  was 
instigated  by  Charities  Publication  Committee  and  was  car- 
ried out  in  co-operation  with  militant  Pittsburghers,  under 
grants  from  the  Russell  Sage  Foundation.  The  study  of  the 
Polish  section  of  Buffalo  was  the  first  undertaking  of  the 
sort  instigated  and  financed  by  the  city  surveyed.  Then  we 
had  that  interesting  state-wide  tour  of  Kentucky  by  Mrs. 
Caroline  Bartlett  Crane,  which  was  a  quick  sizing  up  of  con- 
ditions in  a  group  of  smaller  cities  under  the  State  Board  of 
Health  and  the  State  Federation  of  Women's  Clubs.  We 
know  of  the  series  of  community  studies  carried  out  by  Mr. 
Aronovici  in  Rhode  Island,  and  by  Mr.  St.  John  and  Mr. 
Stelzle  in  Newark,  Sag  Harbor  and  elsewhere;  the  studies  of 
the  Huntington  Presbytery  in  seven  counties  in  central  Penn- 
sylvania; the  work  of  the  Presbyterian  Board  in  its  rural 
surveys  in  Illinois,  Missouri  and  Pennsylvania ;  and  the  scores 
of  neighborhoods,  mill  and  mining  towns  which  the  Federal 
Immigration  Commission  caught  up  in  their  schedules.  Last 
summer  the  Associated  Charities  of  Syracuse,  the  Chamber 
of  Commerce,  the  Central  Trades  Assembly  and  the  Min- 
isterial Association  joined  forces  in  the  stock-taking  of  a 
single  city  which  is  described  (p.  18)  by  Mr.  Harrison;  while 
the  findings  of  the  Lowell  survey  are  just  out  in  book  form. 
Booth's  London,  Rowntree's  York,  the  Hull-House  Books  and 

7Read  at  the  meeting  of  the  Academy  of  Political  Science,  April  18,  1912 


389213 


2  ORGANISATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

Papers,  the  South  End  House  Studies,  Mr.  Kirk's  Providence, 
Dr.  Roberts'  Anthracite  Coal  Communities,  the  Washington 
number  of  Charities  and  The  Commons  are  instances,  all  of 
them,  of  social  investigations  which  have  embodied  many  of 
the  elements  we  find  in  the  survey  idea,  but  which  are  not 
identified  with  the  more  or  less  crystallized  movement  which 
to-day  engages  our  attention.  For  I  have  before  me  four 
closely  typewritten  sheets,  thoroughly  covered  with  the  names 
of  cities  and  organizations  which  are  either  embarked  on  sur- 
veys or  are  considering  surveys,  or  would  like  to  know  more 
about  them.  The  names  of  Minnesota,  Missouri,  Texas  and 
Kansas  towns  show  the  spread  of  the  idea  no  less  than  those 
of  the  four  chief  cities  of  the  British  Northwest.  One  in- 
quiry comes  from  India. 

Just  at  this  juncture,  the  more  immediate  aspect  of  the 
movement  presents  itself  in  the  fact  that  in  nearly  every  city 
in  which  the  Men  and  Religion  Forward  teams  have  set  forth 
a  social  program,  one  of  the  planks  in  that  program  has  been 
to  recommend  a  social  survey.  So  we  are  faced  with  the 
question:  What  is  a  survey,  and  how  shall  the  residents  of 
the  average  city  go  about  one,  with  some  prospect  that  they 
will  be  doing  a  craftsman's  job  of  it?  We  know  in  a  general 
way  that  a  survey  is  something  different  from  the  ordinary 
operations  of  a  municipal  league  or  a  charitable  society  or  a 
settlement — different  even  from  their  campaigns  for  special 
reforms.  We  know  also  that  it  is  different  from  newspaper 
work,  or  a  civic  exhibit,  or  an  official  report  or  scientific  re- 
search as  such ;  although  we  may  have  an  inkling  that  it  par- 
takes of  all  of  these  things,  in  one  way  or  another.  What 
then?  What  elements  distinguish  the  survey?  The  papers 
by  Mr.  Harrison,  Miss  Goldmark  and  Dr.  Palmer  give  con- 
crete answers  and  give  them  with  a  precision  and  taking 
quality  which  can  scarcely  be  bettered  by  any  generalizations. 
They  tell,  however,  of  three  fairly  well-defined  types  of  sur- 
vey ;  and  it  will  help  in  arriving  at  a  working  conception  of 
the  survey  idea,  to  run  over  some  of  the  elements  common  to 
all. 

And  first,  for  purposes  of  comparison,  let  me  set  down 
the  elements,  five  in  number,  which  we  felt  at  the  close  of  the 


THE  SPREAD  OF  THE  SURVEY  IDEA.  3 

Pittsburgh  Survey  made  that  a  distinctive  enterprise.     These 
methods  were : 

1.  To  bring  a  group  of  experts  together  to  co-operate 
with  local  leaders  in  gauging  the  social  needs  of  one  city. 

2.  To  study  these  needs  in  relation  to  each  other,  to  the 
whole  area  of  the  city,  and  to  the  civic  responsibilities  of  de- 
mocracy. 

3.  To  consider  at  the  same  time  both  civic  and  industrial 
conditions,  and  to  consider  them  for  the  most  part  in  their 
bearings  upon  the  wage-earning  population. 

4.  To  reduce  conditions  to  terms  of  household  experi- 
ence and  human  life. 

5.  To  devise  graphic  methods  for  making  these  findings 
challenging,  clear  and  unmistakable. 

If  I  were  recasting  this  formula  to-day,  I  do  not  know 
that  I  should  want  to  change  it  materially.  But  it  will  perhaps 
give  a  better  approach  to  the  survey  movement  to  consider  not 
what  sets  it  off  from  other  undertakings,  but  what  it  draws 
upon  them  for. 

First  of  all,  the  survey  takes  its  unit  of  work  from  the 
surveyor.  It  has  to  do  with  a  subject  matter,  to  be  sure,  but 
that  subject  matter  is  subordinated  to  the  idea  of  a  definite 
geographical  area.  It  is  quite  possible  to  carry  on  a  study  of 
tuberculosis,  for  example,  as  a  piece  of  physiological  research, 
or  as  a  piece  of  sociological  research,  wholly  apart  from  where 
it  occurs.  But  just  as  a  geological  survey  is  not  geology  in 
general,  but  the  geology  of  a  given  mountain  range  or  water- 
shed, so,  even  when  a  special  subject  matter  is  under  study, 
the  sociological  survey  adds  an  element  of  locality,  of  neigh- 
borhood or  city,  state  or  region,  to  what  would  otherwise  pass 
under  the  general  term  of  an  investigation. 

And  when  the  subject  matter  is  not  specialized,  but  con- 
cerns the  more  intangible  "needs"  of  a  community,  the  survey 
becomes  necessarily  different  things  in  different  localities.  It 
cannot  be  thought  out  at  a  far-away  desk.  It  is  responsive  to 
local  conditions ;  in  a  worn-out  country  district,  suffering  from 
what  Professor  Ross  calls  "folk-depktion,"  its  content  has 


4  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

little  in  common  with  that  of  a  survey  in  a  textile  center, 
tense  with  human  activity,  and  dominated  by  its  terms  of  work. 

In  the  second  place,  the  survey  takes  from  the  physician 
his  art  of  applying  to  the  problems  at  hand  standards  and 
experience  worked  out  elsewhere.  To  illustrate,  if  your  pure 
scientist  were  studying  the  housing  situation  in  a  given  town, 
he  would  start  out  perhaps  without  any  hypotheses,  tabulate 
every  salient  fact  as  to  every  house,  cast  up  long  columns  of 
figures,  and  make  careful  deductions,  which  might  and  might 
not  be  worth  the  paper  they  were  written  on.  Your  housing 
reformer  and  your  surveyor  ought  to  know  at  the  start  what 
good  ventilation  is,  and  what  cellar  dwellings  are.  These 
things  have  been  studied  elsewhere,  just  as  the  medical  pro- 
fession has  been  studying  hearts  and  lungs  until  they  know 
the  signals  which  tell  whether  a  man's  organs  are  working 
right  or  not,  and  what  to  look  for  in  making  a  diagnosis. 

In  the  third  place,  the  survey  takes  from  the  engineer  his 
working  conception  of  the  structural  relation  of  things.  There 
is  a  building  element  in  surveys.  When  we  look  at  a  house,  we 
know  that  carpenters  have  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  it,  and 
it  is  possible  to  investigate  just  what  the  carpenters  have  done ; 
also  the  bricklayers,  the  steam-fitters  and  the  rest  of  the  build- 
ing trades.  But  your  engineer,  like  your  general  contractor 
and  architect,  has  to  do  with  the  work  of  each  of  these  crafts 
in  its  relation  to  the  work  of  every  other.  So  it  is  with  a  sur- 
vey, whether  it  deals  with  the  major  elements  entering  into 
a  given  community  which  has  structural  parts  or  a  given 
master  problem  such  as  Dr.  Palmer  describes  in  his  survey 
of  the  sanitary  conditions  in  Springfield.  Only  recently  I 
received  a  letter  from  a  man  engaged  in  making  a  general 
social  survey  of  a  manufacturing  town — a  so-called  survey. 
He  did  not  think  that  it  was  truly  a  survey,  nor  did  I,  because 
out  of  the  scope  of  that  investigation  had  been  left  all  of  the 
labor  conditions  in  the  mills.  The  local  committee  had  been 
fearful  of  raising  opposition  in  forceful  quarters.  Yet  these 
labor  conditions  were  basic  in  the  town's  life;  on  them,  for 
better  or  worse,  hung  much  of  the  community  welfare;  and 
by  ignoring  them,  the  committee  could  deal  with  partial  solu- 
tions only.  It  was  as  if  a  diagnostician  in  making  his  exam- 


THE  SPREAD  OF  THE  SURVEY  IDEA.  5 

ination  had  left  a  patient's  stomach  out  of  consideration  be- 
cause the  patient  was  a  dyspeptic  and  irritable.  They  had 
violated  the  structural  integrity  of  their  survey. 

In  the  fourth  place,  the  survey  takes  from  the  charity- 
organization  movement  its  case-toork  mjethod  of  bringing 
problems  down  to  human  terms.  Death  rates  exemplify 
human  units  in  their  barest  essentials;  but  I  have  in  mind  a 
more  developed  unit.  Let  me  illustrate  from  the  Pittsburgh 
Survey  in  the  painstaking  figures  we  gathered  of  the  house- 
hold cost  of  sickness — lost  wages,  doctor's  bills,  medicines,  ice, 
hospitals,  funerals,  the  aftermath  of  an  epidemic  in  lowered 
vitality  and  lowered  earnings,  household  by  household — not 
in  sweeping  generalizations  but  in  what  Mr.  Woods  called 
"piled-tip  actualities."  If  I  were  to  set  one  touchstone,  more 
than  another,  to  differentiate  the  true  survey  from  social 
prospecting,  it  would  be  this  case-work  method.  In  employ- 
ing it  the  surveyor,  because  of  lack  of  means  and  time,  must 
often  deal  with  samples  rather  than  with  the  whole  population 
coming  within  the  scope  of  his  study.  These  samples  may 
be  groups  of  school  children ;  or  the  people  who  die  in  a  cer- 
tain year;  or  those  who  live  in  a  certain  ward.  The  method 
is  one,  of  course,  which  is  scientifically  justifiable  only  so 
long  as  those  who  employ  it  can  defend  their  choice  of  the 
sample  chosen,  and  show  where  it  does  and  does  not  represent 
the  entire  group. 

Under  this  head  it  is  to  be  noted  that  the  survey  is  in  a 
.field  friendly  to  what  we  have  come  to  call  municipal  research. 
The  latter  is  indebted  for  its  methods  of  unit-costs  and  effi- 
ciency to  the  accountants.  These  methods  may  be  applied  to 
city  budgets  and  city  departments  as  an  integral  part  of  a 
social  survey,  the  distinction  between  the  two  movements 
in  practise  being  perhaps  that  the  one  is  focused  primarily  on 
governmental  operations;  the  other  on  phenomena  imbedded 
in  the  common  life  of  the  people. 

In  the  fifth  place,  the  survey  takes  from  the  journalist 
the  idea  of  graphic  portrayal,  which  begins  with  such  familiar 
tools  of  the  surveyor  as  maps  and  charts  and  diagrams,  and 
reaches  far  through  a  scale  in  which  photographs  and  enlarge- 
ments, drawings,  casts  and  three-dimension  exhibits  exploit 


6  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

all  that  the  psychologists  have  to  tell  us  of  the  advantages 
which  the  eye  holds  over  the  ear  as  a  means  for  communica- 
tion. With  these  the  survey  links  a  sturdy  effort  to  make  its 
findings  have  less  in  common  with  the  boredom  of  official 
reports  than  with  the  more  engaging  qualities  of  newspaper 
"copy" — especially  that  simplicity  of  structure,  tangible  frame- 
work, and  readability  which  American  magazine  men  have 
developed  as  their  technique  in  writing  for  a  democracy. 
This  is  not  a  counsel,  bear  in  mind,  of  flimsy  sensationalism; 
although  those  who  have  matters  to  conceal  seek  to  confuse 
the  two.  A  startling  article  patched  up  from  a  few  glints  of 
fact  is  a  very  different  proposition  from  a  crystal  set  in  a 
matrix  of  tested  information. 

Underlying  this  factor  of  graphic  portrayal  is  the  factor 
of  truth;  truth  plus  publicity.  It  is  often  possible  to  work 
out  large  and  definite  reforms  internally,  by  getting  a  group  of 
forceful  men  around  a  table  and  convincing  them  that  so  and 
so  is  the  right  thing  to  do.  This  is,  I  take  it,  a  legitimate 
method  of  philanthropic  work  and  of  social  reform.  But  it  is 
not  the  method  of  a  survey.  The  survey's  method  is  one  of 
publicity ;  it  is  another  and  separate  implement  for  social  ad- 
vance, and  its  usefulness  should  not  be  negatived  by  a  failure 
to  hold  to  its  distinctive  function.  The  philosophy  of  the  sur- 
vey is  to  set  forth  before  the  community  all  the  facts  that 
bear  on  a  problem,  and  to  rely  upon  the  common  understand- 
ing, the  common  forethought,  the  common  purpose  of  all  the 
people  as  the  first  great  resource  to  be  drawn  upon  in  working 
that  problem  out.  Thus  conceived,  the  survey  becomes  a 
distinctive  and  powerful  implement  of  democracy. 

With  these  five  working  principles  in  mind,  how  can  the 
survey  idea  be  applied  to  the  average  community,  how  and  on 
what  scale  should  its  working  scheme  be  launched?  Here 
there  is  already  some  experience  upon  which  to  draw.  At  one 
extreme  we  have  a  superficial  skimming  of  facts — what  we 
call  in  the  Middle  West  a  lick-and-a-promise.  Perhaps  it  is 
limited  to  passing  round  and  filling  out  schedules  devised  to  fit 
any  city — such  as  were  used  in  many  places  in  advance  of  the 
Men  and  Religion  campaign  week.  These  were  not  without 
value  in  throwing  some  facts  of  community  life  into  relief 


THE  SPREAD  OF  THE  SURVEY  IDEA.  7 

and  in  showing  where  released  energies  might  at  once  be  ap- 
plied; but  the  team  leaders  very  properly  did  not  call  them 
surveys,  making  them  rather  a  basis  for  recommending  the 
larger  work.  They  bear  about  the  same  relation  to  a  survey 
that  the  blanks  which  a  mail-order  tailoring  establishment 
sends  out  for  self -measurement  bear  to  a  thorough-going  phy- 
sical examination. 

At  the  other  end  of  the  scale  we  have  the  sort  of  a  survey 
which  the  Pittsburgh  Survey,  if  we  regard  it  as  an  experiment, 
demonstrated  can  with  staff  and  resources  some  day  be  made 
in  one  of  our  first-class  cities.  The  Pittsburgh  Survey  made  a 
quick  diagnosis  of  perhaps  twenty  phases  of  life  and  labor  in 
the  steel  district  on  the  basis  of  standards  worked  out  else- 
where; it  brought  these  diagnoses  together  and  studied  some- 
thing of  the  structural  relation  of  the  problems  set  forth ;  but  it 
sank  shafts  of  definite,  consistent,  active  investigation  in  but 
five  or  six  fields  and  even  there  rigorous  limitations  had  to  be 
set  to  the  scope  of  the  work.  For  example,  we  studied,  case 
by  case,  500  families  to  see  how  they  actually  made  shift  when 
the  bread-winner  was  killed  at  his  day's  work.  The  super- 
survey  would  not  only  gauge  the  chief  factors  entering  into  a 
community ;  gauge  also  their  fabrication  into  its  general  work- 
ing scheme;  but  would  study  the  human  bearings  of  every 
factor  as  searchingly  as  we  studied  the  economic  reaction  of 
these  industrial  accidents. 

Not  a  few  of  the  elements  in  such  a  survey  will  ultimately 
be  carried  out  as  part  of  the  routine  work  of  our  governmental, 
institutional  and  industrial  organizations.  This  was  illustrated 
in  the  recommendation  made  by  a  stockholders'  committee  at 
the  recent  meeting  of  the  United  States  Steel  Corporation. 
The  work  which  the  Pittsburgh  Survey  put  into  gathering 
elementary  facts  as  to  hours,  wages  and  other  labor  conditions 
in  the  Pittsburgh  district  exhausted  a  very  considerable  share 
of  our  funds  and  energy.  This  stockholders'  committee  held 
that  in  the  same  way  that  their  corporation  had  taken  the  lead 
in  publishing  extensive  reports  on  its  financial  operations  and 
output,  it  should  be  its  policy  in  the  future  to  lay  before  stock- 
holders and  public  the  general  facts  as  to  labor  conditions  in 
their  mills.  That,  it  seemed  to  me,  was  well-nigh  revolution- 


8  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

ary.  Similarly  many  of  our  city  and  state  departments — 
health,  labor,  finance  and  education — are  putting  out  more 
and  more  as  part  of  their  legitimate  routine  the  salient  facts 
upon  which  public  opinion  can  formulate  working  judgments. 

If  this  were  done  generally,  the  survey,  to  my  mind, 
would  still  be  an  opportune  instrument  for  social  advance ; — on 
its  civic  side,  in  enabling  us  to  see  whether  or  not  there  are 
great  gaps  in  the  frontage  with  which  a  community  faces  the 
future,  and  on  its  scientific  side,  in  measuring  the  human  re- 
action of  various  institutions,  agencies  and  measures,  which 
are  carried  forward  in  the  name  of  progress  and  which  should 
be  tested  and  checked  up  from  time  to  time. 

But  what  we  can  discuss  most  profitably  here  is  the  sort 
of  undertaking  which  as  things  stand  to-day  a  community, 
ranging  anywhere  from  ten  thousand  to  half  a  million,  can 
take  up, — neither  a  skimping  survey  that  does  not  get  beneath 
the  surface,  nor  the  comprehensive  interlocking  survey  just 
outlined  which  must  needs  require  a  large  staff  and  resources. 
What  are  we  to  recommend  when  a  group  of  progressive  peo- 
ple in  such  a  community  come  forward  and  say  they  want  to 
start  a  survey — a  group  with  only  general  notions  as  to  the 
things  most  seriously  in  need  of  inquiry  in  their  locality,  and 
with  slender  funds  which  may  grow  only  as  the  undertaking 
shows  its  usefulness  ?  Two  lines  of  action  seem  most  promis- 
ing. 

The  first  of  these  is  to  recommend  that  they  secure  a  man 
of  all-around  experience  in  social  work  to  come  to  their  com- 
jiiunity  for  a  quick  sizing  up  of  things — a  report  which  will 
enable  them  to  see  where  the  land  lies — and  either  base  a 
general  social  survey  upon  this  report,  or  follow  up  intensively 
one  or  more  of  the  principal  "leads"  disclosed. 

The  second  possible  line  of  action  is  to  start  out  with  some 
unit  less  than  the  general  social  problem  of  their  city,  with  the 
idea  that  work  less  spread-out  and  more  exact  will  in  the  long 
run  lead  farther.  There  are  several  ways  in  which  this  can 
be  done.  One  method  is  to  take  a  given  neighborhood,  in  the 
way  that  the  Buffalo  survey  took  its  Polish  district.  This 
method  has  the  advantage  of  focusing  attention  on  a  manage- 
able area,  where  definite  results  (like  the  Buffalo  playgrounds 


THE  SPREAD  OF  THE  SURVEY  IDEA.  9 

and  evening  schools  for  immigrants)  can  be  reached  while  the 
survey  is  in  process.  It  has  the  disadvantage  that  it  may  tend 
to  confirm  the  impressions  of  squalor  already  held  by  polite 
residents  of  a  city  as  to  some  particular  neighborhood,  without 
forcing  in  upon  them  the  fact  that  a  community  is  like  a  hu- 
man being  and  none  of  its  members  can  be  sick  without  being 
a  drag  on  the  whole ;  without  rousing  the  whole  city  to  action, 
or  even,  as  in  Buffalo,  leading  up  to  a  general  city  survey. 
A  modification  of  this  method  was  discussed  in  New  Haven — 
the  suggestion  being  to  take  a  belt  running  through  the  town, 
so  as  to  be  representative  of  good  and  bad  conditions  alike, 
the  well-to-do,  the  middling-to-do,  and  the  poor.  This  plan  has 
imaginative  values,  a  practical  obstacle  perhaps  being  the  diffi- 
culty in  fitting  existing  sources  of  statistics  to  such  a  philan- 
thropic gerrymander.  Another  method  is  to  take  a  block  and 
study  its  people  intensively  in  the  matter  of  their  social  needs 
and  the  resources  of  the  city  with  respect  to  them,  in  much 
the  same  way  as  (from  the  standpoint  of  racial  composition 
and  social  mind)  Dr.  Jones  and  Prof.  Woolston  have  studied 
given  New  York  city  blocks.  Such  a  method  would  unques- 
tionably supply  an  exceptional  group  of  citizens  with  rare 
insight  as  to  the  actual  operations  and  values  of  much  of  our 
social  work.  With  this  insight  they  could  reach  judgments 
and  execute  reforms,  but  the  plan  would  scarcely  usher  in  that 
self-consciousness  which  comes  when  a  whole  community  sees 
itself  in  the  large,  and  which,  to  my  mind,  gives  the  commu- 
nity survey  its  exceptional  dynamic  force. 

In  contrast  to  these  methods,  which  consider  fairly  small 
areas  in  their  relation  to  a  wide  range  of  social  needs,  another 
partial  method  is  to  take  some  one  social  problem  and  study 
it  in  its  bearings  on  the  entire  community — such  a  problem  as 
recreation.  This  would  cover  not  only  a  study  of  playgrounds 
and  play  opportunities,  but  an  examination  of  the  city  play 
bill  (nickleodeons,  skating  rinks,  cheap  shows,  dance  halls)  as 
was  made  by  the  Kansas  City  Board  of  Public  Welfare,  to  see 
how  much  fun  was  costing  the  people,  how  they  could  spend 
less  and  get  more,  and  how  far  commercialized  amusements 
should  be  supervised.  It  would  cover  the  larger  uses  of  school 
houses,  substitutes  for  saloons,  the  utilization  of  outdoors, 


io  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

and  the  natural  resources  of  wood  and  valley  back  from  a  city ; 
the  extent  of  leisure  and  the  social  effects  of  its  compression 
through  over-work  and  Sunday  labor;  the  money  surplus  for 
recreation  in  household  budgets ;  and  so  on. 

While  local  conditions,  the  agencies  interested,  the  public 
temper  and  the  money  available  are  considerations  which  must 
be  duly  reckoned  with,  my  feeling  is  that  the  first  line  of 
approach  described  is  the  one  which  will  serve  most  cities 
best ; — that  is,  the  quick  sizing  up  process  to  see  how  the  land 
lies  and  to  plant  what  the  civil  engineers  call  "bench  marks" 
at  points  of  vantage.  For  this  work  can  be  done  on  a  scale  to 
fit  any  town's  pocket-book,  it  embodies  in  a  rudimentary  way 
the  elements  which  we  have  seen  are  the  essential  methods  of 
a  survey,  and  it  gives  perspective.  The  scientific  farmer  who 
has  his  soils  examined  in  taking  up  new  land,  the  business  man 
who  is  used  to  inventories  as  a  basis  of  planning  for  the  year 
ahead,  the  physician  who  is  called  on  less  frequently  to  doctor 
fevers  and  set  bones  than  to  overhaul  patients  who  are  "all 
run  down,"  will  not  need  to  have  the  value  of  such  a  piece  of 
preliminary  stock-taking  argued  out  with  them.  A  town  with 
ten  thousand  people  can  get  a  man  with  what  you  might  call 
a  general  practitioner's  equipment  in  social  work  to  spend  half 
a  week  there  with  fair  prospect  that  his  report  will  be  some- 
thing on  which  they  can  build.  Superficial  though  it  would 
frankly  be,  it  should  bring  the  more  easily  recognizable  needs 
and  opportunities  in  the  town's  life  to  the  test  of  standards 
worked  out  elsewhere — which,  as  we  have  seen,  is  one  of  the 
first  and  easiest  tasks  of  a  survey.  It  could  scarcely  fail  to 
show  how  health  hangs  on  civic  enterprise  and  in  kindred 
ways  make  average  citizens  see  that  things  which  they  may 
have  regarded  as  unrelated  are  bound  up  in  each  other.  It 
would  correspondingly  show  these  things  in  proportion.  The 
sky-scraping  pride  with  which  a  growing  town  points  to  an 
atrocious  six  or  ten-story  block  on  its  chief  corner  is  not 
energy  any  more  misapplied  than  many  a  philanthropic  enter- 
prise, bred  to  suit  city  conditions,  which  the  small  town  swal- 
lows hoofs,  hide  and  all.  Such  a  report  would  gather  up,  if 
rightly  made,  the  progressive  ideas  held  by  local  people  who 
have  seen  farther  ahead  than  their  neighbors ;  and  it  would 


THE  SPREAD  OF  THE  SURVEY  IDEA.  n 

have  the  force — and  that  counts  for  a  good  deal  in  a  growing 
community — of  being  heralded  as  the  judgment  of  a  "city  ex- 
pert," thereby  gaining  a  hearing  for  things  which  local 
prophets  may  have  despaired  of.  Further,  such  a  report,  if 
it  sets  a  vision  of  what  the  town  might  be,  tugs  at  the  imagina- 
tion of  the  people  and  loosens  energies  in  many  directions. 
The  same  things  hold  true  for  a  larger  city — the  city  of 
twenty-five  to  fifty  thousand  which  can  employ  such  a  prelim- 
inary prospector  for  from  a  fortnight  to  six  weeks ;  or  the 
still  larger  city  which  can  engage  for  this  sizing-up  process 
a  man  of  experience  and  all-around  equipment  with  two  or 
three  assistants,  for  a  six  months  commission.  Its  alternative 
would  be  to  get  experts  in  half  a  dozen  of  the  major  fields 
of  social  concern  to  come  on  the  ground  for  say  a  fortnight 
each,  relying  upon  a  local  committee  to  synthesize  these  special 
reports  into  a  general  scheme  of  procedure.  The  Syracuse 
survey  illustrated  these  two  methods  somewhat  in  combina- 
tion, for  Mr.  Harrison  spent  six  weeks  in  his  general  work, 
and  various  national  and  local  bodies  were  successfully  ap- 
pealed to  to  carry  on  the  field  work  along  special  lines. 

Such  a  preliminary  report  once  in  hand,  the  community 
small  or  large  is  in  much  more  favorable  position  than  at  the 
start  to  make  constructive  decisions.  It  may  decide  to  carry 
on  any  one  of  the  inquiries  which  I  enumerated  earlier  as  pos- 
sible lines  of  action,  only  with  far  larger  chance  of  their  being 
done  intelligently  and  with  prospect  of  results  for  the  whole 
city.  It  may  do  what  Rochester  is  doing — that  is,  what  might 
be  called  a  consecutive  survey,  organizing  and  calling  on  ex- 
perts to  take  up  first  one  phase  of  social  concern  and  then 
another.  This  is  the  sort  of  work  done  by  the  Pittsburgh  Civic 
Commission.  It  may  focus  its  efforts  on  some  district,  and 
there  sink  its  inquiries  into  the  structure  of  the  common  life. 
This  the  Bureau  of  Social  Research  under  Miss  Goldmark 
has  done  on  a  district  scale  on  the  upper  west  side  of  New 
York,  scrutinizing  in  a  given  neighborhood  how  courts  and 
charitable  agencies,  the  departments  of  health  and  education 
come  in  contact  with  the  life  of  the  people — how  they  may  be 
turned  from  impersonal  machines  to  intimate  agencies  within 
reach  of  the  average  family.  The  community  may  focus  its 


12  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

attention,  on  the  other  hand,  on  the  co-ordination  of  govern- 
mental activities  and  by  means  of  municipal  research,  budget 
exhibits  and  the  like,  make  the  public  business  take  on  new 
efficiency  and  new  meaning. 

But  for  cities  of  from  25,000  to  250,000  population,  the 
simple  and  natural  and,  I  believe,  most  promising  result  of  the 
preliminary  survey,  would  be  a  systematic  community  survey 
growing  out  of  it,  one  with  sufficient  staff,  sufficient  time  and 
sufficient  expenditures  to  make  a  thorough-going  inventory  of 
the  life  and  labor  of  the  place,  to  seek  out  the  wastes  in  its  eco- 
nomic and  vital  resources,  to  captivate  and  give  constructive 
content  to  its  evanescent  and  often  sorely  exploited  enthusi- 
asms, and  to  lay  a  sure  foundation  of  information  on  which 
to  plan  and  build  for  ten  years  ahead. 

The  scale  on  which  such  a  permanent  survey — and  by  per- 
manent I  of  course  do  not  mean  a  perennial  enterprise,  but  one 
enduring  in  the  foundation  it  lays — should  be  undertaken, 
would  depend  on  the  size  and  public  spirit  of  the  community. 
But  the  survey  movement  has  reached  a  point  where  we  can 
say  with  some  degree  of  precision — as  I  have  undertaken  to  do 
earlier  in  this  paper — what  are  the  essential  methods  which 
should  enter  into  its  work,  and  where  we  can  say,  with  some 
degree  of  conviction,  that  such  a  working  scheme  will  have 
practical  and  far-reaching  results. 

Right  here,  it  may  be  well  to  interpolate  two  points  as  to 
the  civic  investment  which  a  community  puts  into  a  survey. 
No  town  should  be  balked  at  launching  one,  under  the  im- 
pression that  it  is  a  contraption  suited  only  to  a  large  city,  or 
one  which  only  a  great  philanthropic  foundation  can  afford.  I 
have  indicated  how  a  small  town  can  make  a  start  at  modest 
expense ;  and  Dr.  Palmer  describes  the  wide  range  of  sanitary 
investigations  which  he  carried  out  as  commissioner  of  public 
health  of  Springfield,  Illinois,  in  co-operation  with  local  people 
and  at  almost  no  extra  cost  to  the  city.  With  a  superintendent 
of  schools  as  far-sighted  and  resourceful  as  this  health  com- 
missioner, a  judge  who  would  look  at  jails,  police  and  legal 
processes  with  what  the  Wisconsin  supreme  court  calls  twen- 
tieth-century eyes,  an  engineer  with  ingenuity  and  vision,  and 
with  other  volunteers  and  officials  of  like  caliber,  men  with 


THE  SPREAD  OF  THE  SURVEY  IDEA.  13 

social  viewpoint  and  with  some  acquaintance  with  other  cities, 
men  giving  their  leisure  and  to  some  extent  their  working 
hours  to  the  plan,  you  would  have  a  local  staff  for  a  rounded 
community  survey.  They  could  carry  it  out  as  a  piece  of  good 
citizenship  on  a  level  which  would  command  national  atten- 
tion and  respect,  and  which  would  set  a  new  gauge  for  civic 
patriotism.  On  the  other  hand,  consider  a  city  with  say  a 
cigar-store  keeper  as  health  commissioner,  without  any  health 
reports,  and  with  acrid  resistance  on  the  part  of  the  dominant 
political  machine  to  any  probing  of  its  health  service.  The 
process  of  surveying  in  such  a  backward  city  is  a  very  differ- 
ent matter;  so  also  is  the  cost  of  bringing  onto  the  ground  a 
sanitarian  of  Dr.  Palmer's  breadth  of  outlook,  gained  from 
his  work  in  the  state  and  city  public  health  service;  and  then 
keeping  him  there  long  enough  to  get  a  thorough  grasp  of  the 
sanitary  situation,  and  to  gather  data  sufficient  to  carry  the 
town  with  him. 

And  here  we  are  close  to  the  fact  that  while  many  of  the 
more  obvious  social  conditions  can  be  brought  to  light  by  lay- 
men, the  reach  of  social  surveying  depends  on  those  qualities 
which  we  associate  with  the  expert  in  every  profession ;  knowl- 
edge of  the  why  of  sanitary  technique,  for  example,  and  of  the 
how  by  which  other  cities  have  wrought  out  this  reform  and 
that.  And  townsmen  who  would  think  nothing  of  paying  the 
county  engineer  a  sizable  fee  to  run  a  line  for  a  fence  bound- 
ary must  be  educated  up  to  the  point  where  they  will  see  the 
economy  of  investing  in  trained  service  in  social  and  civic  up- 
building. Unscientific  acquaintance  with  what  other  cities  are 
doing  may  lead  only  to  duplicating  their  mistakes ;  untraveled 
advice  may,  on  the  other  hand,  lead  only  to  finding  out  slowly 
and  at  bitter  cost  what  has  elsewhere  been  demonstrated. 
Ignorance  of  the  facts  that  lie  concealed  in  an  unresolved  mass 
of  local  statistics  is  only  less  costly,  humanly  speaking,  than 
the  too  ready  acceptance  of  notions  which  hearty  but  ignorant 
handling  can  shake  out  of  the  same  statistics. 

My  second  point  as  to  the  civic  investment  in  a  survey  is 
that  it  pays  not  only  for  a  city  to  get  at  its  underlying  facts 
but  to  get  those  facts  out  into  the  open.  There  is  no  older 
subterfuge  than  to  beat  the  drums  of  local  pride  and  charge 


i4  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

that  the  leaders  who  are  overhauling  bad  conditions  are  injur- 
ing the  fair  name  of  a  city.  This  charge  finds  customary  ex- 
pression in  the  rumor  that  manufacturing  enterprises  will 
keep  away  if  they  learn  that  the  schools  are  poor,  the  council 
is  full  of  graft,  or  the  water  is  infected;  and  that  one  who 
advertises  these  things  by  rousing  the  public  to  reform  is  the 
town  traitor.  Yet  the  city  of  the  Southwest  that,  as  a  gala 
day  approached,  put  up  a  high  board  fence  so  that  you  could 
not  see  the  shacks  that  at  one  point  lined  its  principal  thor- 
oughfare, may  have  fooled  the  distinguished  visitor  who  was 
driven  past,  but  it  could  not  fool  the  manufacturer  who  is  look- 
ing for  a  new  site;  still  less — and  this  is  equally  important 
from  the  standpoint  of  local  interests — could  it  fool  intelligent 
workmen  who  are  looking  for  a  town  in  which  to  bring  up 
their  families.  I  have  known  of  an  enterprise  that  refused  to 
settle  in  a  city  because  it  would  not  bribe  the  aldermen  for  a 
side  track  (perhaps  the  first  of  a  long  series  of  petty  hold-ups) 
and  of  another  that  refused  to  settle  where  skilled  mechanics 
could  not  find  the  sort  of  living  conditions  and  recreation  they 
were  accustomed  to.  It  could  not  get  its  men  to  come  along. 
When  such  decisions  hang  in  the  balance  I  fancy  one  factor 
that  counts  in  Worcester's  favor  is  the  fight  of  its  manufac- 
turers against  tuberculosis,  in  Pittsburgh's  favor  is  the  great 
filtration  plant  with  which  the  city  has  downed  typhoid,  in 
Cleveland's  favor  is  the  civic  campaigns  of  its  Chamber  of 
Commerce.  All  these  things  stand  for  enterprise.  They  are 
upbuilding  of  the  sort  which  means  first  of  all  getting  down 
to  bed  rock;  and  that  is  the  sort  of  investment  which  a  city 
puts  into  a  survey. 

Convinced  as  I  am,  however,  that  a  survey  is  "good  busi- 
ness" in  the  long  run  from  the  standpoint  of  a  city's  prosperity, 
it  has  a  broader  appeal.  It  is  one  of  the  channels  open  to  the 
aroused  social  conscience  of  our  generation.  In  the  govern- 
mental field  we  have  two  strong  movements — one  towards 
greater  efficiency;  the  other  toward  greater  democracy.  The 
first  is  reflected  nationally  by  the  President's  Commission  on 
Efficiency  and  Economy;  the  second  finds  expression  in  the 
Western  insurgent  movement  which  through  the  initiative, 
referendum  and  recall,  seeks  to  bring  the  legislative  "say" 


THE  SPREAD  OF  THE  SURVEY  IDEA.  15 

back  to  the  people.  If  we  were  to  personify  the  first  move- 
ment, it  would  be  to  give  it  the  character  of  the  expert;  the 
second,  the  character  of  the  average  citizen.  And  in  the  gen- 
eral trend,  we  have  the  expert  and  the  average  man  coming  to- 
gether; and  jointly  challenging  the  frontage  which  existing  in- 
stitutions, professions  and  organized  forces  bear  toward  the 
needs  of  the  times. 

They  challenge  the  church,  the  school,  the  city  council, 
the  court,  the  mill,  in  the  name  of  the  mighty  industrial 
changes  which  have  put  new  strains  on  old  institutions ;  in  the 
name  of  science,  which  has  opened  new  possibilities  and  new 
hopes ;  and  in  the  name  of  the  common  welfare  which  is  strik- 
ing a  fairer  balance  between  property  and  life. 

For  many  existing  conditions  we  have  only  ourselves  to 
blame;  but  in  changing  them,  we  have  to  overcome  the  re- 
sistance of  those  whose  scheme  of  service  to  the  community 
has  grown  up  with  the  old  conditions.  Dr.  Palmer  illustrates 
this  in  what  he  says  of  the  milk  supply.  Let  us  look  at  the 
milkman  as  a  factor  in  the  community  life — an  institution  if 
you  will.  In  the  past  we  may  have  officially  asked  of  him  a 
certain  grade  of  butter-fat  in  his  milk,  but  that  is  a  dairyman's 
standard,  worked  out  in  the  cheese  and  butter  trade.  We  have 
demanded  a  collar  of  cream  as  a  sign  of  richness — the  unin- 
formed milk-drinker's  notion  of  protecting  himself  against 
watered  milk.  But  we  are  only  beginning  to  demand  what  the 
dietitians  and  physicians  are  showing  us  is  more  important 
than  either  of  these,  namely,  clean  milk — clean  milk,  rendered 
more  difficult  to  obtain  by  the  very  dirt  and  congestion  of  our 
new  urban  conditions ;  rendered  vital  by  the  laboratory  dis- 
coveries of  the  last  twenty  years  in  bacterial  diseases ;  ren- 
dered possible  by  our  advances  in  methods  of  sterilization; 
rendered  an  issue  among  the  people  at  large,  by  the  demon- 
strable effect  of  dirty  milk  upon  the  health  of  thousands  of 
babies — a  human  test,  this  last,  such  as  enables  the  average 
mother  and  the  expert  sanitarian  to  join  forces  in  a  campaign 
to  clean  up  stables  and  milk  routes,  and  to  put  an  end  to  dirty 
cans  and  tuberculous  cows.  I  need  not  show  how  through  all 
this  runs  the  three-fold  challenge  in  the  name  of  mighty  in- 
dustrial changes,  of  scientific  advance  and  of  the  common 
welfare. 


16  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

That  challenge  is  one  repeated  over  and  over  again  in  the 
fields  of  social  concern.  It  does  not  require  a  very  wide 
stretch  of  the  imagination  to  apply  the  same  analysis  to  the 
Titanic  disaster.  Compare  the  commercial  demand  for  speed 
and  capacity  in  ocean  liners  with  the  commercial  demand  for 
butter  fat.  Compare  the  blind  popular  demand  for  luxuries  in 
cabins  with  the  blind  popular  demand  for  a  thick  collar  of 
cream.  Life  boats  are  like  clean  milk.  Safety  is  a  human 
rather  than  a  commercial  standard.  Some  naval  experts  have 
been  preaching  it  for  years,  but  their  judgments  have  fallen 
on  deaf  ears.  Now  the  average  man  at  last  sees ;  and  (in  high 
rage)  he  is  calling  for  a  change.  Those  responsible  for  ocean 
vessels  are  charged  to  make  safety  keep  pace  with  the  great 
structural  changes  in  the  shipping  industry;  to  apply  science 
to  human  well-being,  as  well  as  to  speed. 

In  many  of  these  deep-seated  social  needs,  apparently 
some  great  disaster  has  to  overtake  us,  and  smite  us,  before 
as  a  people  we  are  aroused  to  them,  and  half-blindly,  often 
wholly  unthinking  of  our  own  responsibility,  demand  immedi- 
ate reform.  This  is  so  whether  it  is  a  dam  which  gives  way 
like  Austin;  or  a  theatre  which  burns  like  the  Iroquois;  or  a 
blazing  schoolhouse  full  of  children  like  that  at  Cleveland;  or 
a  loft  building  like  the  Triangle.  Coupled  with  this  very 
human  tendency  is  another,  equally  human.  For  while  it  takes 
one  of  these  great  disasters  to  drive  the  lesson  home,  we  are 
faced  with  the  fact  that  the  feeling  of  exasperation  and  pur- 
pose, the  "conscience-smittenness"  of  the  community,  more  of- 
ten than  not  fritters  away  before  it  accomplishes  anything. 
Thus  a  year  has  already  elapsed  since  the  lives  of  146  working 
people  were  snuffed  out  in  the  Triangle  disaster  in  New  York, 
and  while  public  indignation  has  vented  itself  in  mass  meetings 
and  safety  committees,  in  investigating  commissions  and  fire 
bills,  there  has  been  no  action  within  the  intervening  twelve 
months  which  would  thoroughly  prevent  the  recurrence  of 
such  a  panic  fire  and  no  sure  provision  which  would  get  the 
people  out,  any  more  than  the  Titanic's  meager  life-boat  equip- 
ment was  enough  to  float  the  two  cabins,  the  crew  and  the 
steerage,  when  the  great  boat  sank.  Had  a  modern  shipload 
of  passengers  in  New  York  harbor  ever  gone  through  the 


THE  SPREAD  OF  THE  SURVEY  IDEA.  17 

motions  of  getting  into  the  life  boats  and  away,  the  safety 
equipment  of  our  ocean  liners  would  have  been  put  to  a  human 
test.  That  test  would  have  borne  out  what  the  naval  experts 
had  been  saying,  and  would  have  demonstrated  it  so  thrillingly 
that  not  only  the  people  who  were  left  behind  on  deck  would 
have  seen  their  own  helplessness,  but  average  citizens  every- 
where would  have  been  alive  to  what  safety  means  in  ocean 
travel. 

To  visualize  needs  which  are  not  so  spectacular  but  are 
no  less  real,  is  the  work  of  the  survey — to  bring  them  to 
human  terms,  to  put  the  operations  of  the  government,  of 
social  institutions  and  of  industrial  establishments  to  the  test 
of  individual  lives,  to  bring  the  knowledge  and  inventions  of 
scientists  and  experts  home  to  the  common  imagination,  and 
to  gain  for  their  proposals  the  dynamic  backing  of  a  convinced 
democracy. 

The  survey  cannot  count  upon  a  catastrophe  to  point  its 
morals.  The  public  interest  it  creates  comes  harder  but  has 
better  staying  qualities.  In  so  far  as  it  must  lay  a  framework 
for  setting  forth  the  wide  range  of  needs  and  opportunities 
which  fall  within  its  field,  so  it  has  inherent  the  prospect  of 
a  more  sustained  and  organic  accomplishment. 


A  Social  Survey  of  a  Typical  American  City1 

SHELBY  M.  HARRISON. 
Director  of  the  Syracuse  Social  Survey. 

JUST  as  cities  or  communities  differ,  so  will  city  or  commu- 
nity surveys  be  different.  Any  set  method  for  this  kind 
of  inventory-taking,  intended  for  general  application, 
must  after  all  be  largely  suggestive,  leaving  wide  latitude  for 
shifting  the  emphasis  according  as  conditions  vary  from  city 
to  city.  Not  with  the  thought,  therefore,  that  the  recent  pre- 
liminary social  survey  of  the  city  of  Syracuse,  New  York, 
presents  an  inclusive  plan  for  city  surveying  nor  that  it  is  a 
sample  of  what  a  full-fledged  city  survey  ought  to  be;  but, 
rather,  that  it  may  carry  some  suggestion  for  organizing  and 
defining  a  city  survey  and  be  an  illustrative  instance  of  what 
one  city  did  toward  securing  a  program  of  "next-steps"  in  its 
civic  and  social  development,  that  undertaking  is  recounted. 

About  a  year  ago  several  citizens  of  Syracuse,  among 
them  Rev.  Murray  S.  Howland  and  Paul  E.  Illman,  became 
convinced  that  the  rapid  growth  of  the  city  in  the  last  decade, 
with  its  consequent  changes  in  social  relationships,  had 
brought  new  problems  calling  for  new  diagnosis  and  treat- 
ment, and  that  the  time  had  come  for  at  least  a  preliminary 
stock-taking  of  local  conditions  affecting  the  life,  health  and 
progress  of  the  city's  150,000  people.  This  purpose  became 
specific  along  at  least  two  lines :  first,  to  gather  sufficient  data 
on  points  which  seemed  to  call  for  immediate  action  so  that 
definite  constructive  recommendations  could  be  made;  and 
second,  to  make  a  sufficient  diagnosis  of  general  conditions  so 
as  to  determine  whether  and  along  what  lines  a  later,  more 
intensive  survey  should  be  carried  on. 

In  order  to  give  the  enterprise  strong  and  wide  local  back- 
ing, the  support  of  the  four  large  organizations  in  the  city 
which  themselves  were  federations  of  other  organizations  was 
sought  and  secured,  namely,  the  Ministerial  Association,  which 

1Read  at  the  meeting  of  the  Academy  of  Political  Science,  April  18,  1912 


SURVEY  OF  A  TYPICAL  AMERICAN  CITY.  19 

includes  something  over  a  hundred  churches ;  the  Chamber  of 
Commerce,  which  represents  employers  and  industrial  and 
commercial  organizations ;  the  Central  Trades  Assembly, 
which  represents  all  the  labor  unions  of  the  city;  and  the 
Associated  Charities,  which  represents  to  some  extent  the 
relief  agencies.  The  Chamber  of  Commerce  subscribed  two- 
fifths  of  the  estimated  expenses  of  the  survey,  and  each  of  the 
other  three  organizations  guaranteed  one-fifth.  Each  organ- 
ization chose  three  representatives  on  a  central  survey  com- 
mittee of  twelve,  and  gave  the  committee  full  power  to  go 
ahead  with  the  survey.  The  committee  included  some  of  the 
most  influential  men  in  the  city.  Representing,  as  it  did,  forces 
that  are  not  always  in  accord  in  city  life,  the  committee  de- 
veloped into  a  very  remarkable  working  group — so  remarkable, 
in  fact,  that  people  outside  the  group  were  unwilling  to  see  it 
broken  up  after  it  had  completed  the  immediate  work  to  which 
it  was  committed. 

A  director  from  outside  the  city  was  secured  to  carry  the 
social  inventory  as  far  as  seemed  practicable  in  five  weeks ;  and 
several  sub-committees  were  appointed  to  gather  general  in- 
formation which  would  be  of  use  to  the  investigators — includ- 
ing city  and  county  reports  for  a  number  of  years  back ;  special 
reports  published  by  the  chamber  of  commerce,  the  board  of 
education,  the  academy  of  medicine  and  other  organizations : 
population  figures ;  maps ;  city  ordinances ;  and  so  on.  The 
director  spent  most  of  his  first  week  in  company  with  some 
member  or  members  of  the  central  committee,  interviewing 
city  officials,  business  men,  labor  leaders,  clergymen,  teachers, 
social  workers,  physicians  and  others  familiar  with  social  con- 
ditions. The  purpose  of  the  interviews  was  to  become  satu- 
rated with  the  main  facts  of  the  community,  especially  those 
which  indicated,  from  many  points  of  view,  improvements 
made  in  the  last  ten  or  fifteen  years,  and  improvements  also 
from  many  points  of  view  that  were  thought  to  be  needed  in 
the  next  few  years  ahead.  With  these  facts  digested  the  cen- 
tral committee  picked  out  the  main  lines  of  inquiry  to  be 
followed.  They  were,  in  broad  terms : 

T.     Health  conservation  and  sanitation. 

2.     Housing  conditions  among  unskilled  workers. 


20  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

3.  The  betterment  agencies  of  the  city. 

4.  Foreign  populations. 

5.  Juvenile  delinquency. 

6.  Civic  improvement. 

7.  Labor  conditions. 

Certain  phases  of  municipal  accounting,  public  finance  and 
local  taxation,  would  have  been  included  in  the  survey,  but  for 
the  fact  that  one  member  of  the  central  committee  had  already 
set  on  foot  plans  for  handling  such  an  investigation  in  another 
way.  This  investigation  has  since  been  made  by  experts  from 
the  New  York  Bureau  of  Municipal  Research ;  and  interest  in 
it  had  undoubtedly  been  enhanced  by  the  social  and  civic  re- 
vival which  citizens  are  free  to  credit  as  one  of  the  results  of 
the  social  survey. 

All  of  these  subjects  chosen  presented  phases  of  such  cur- 
rent importance  that  the  committee  wished  them  followed  fur- 
ther; yet  it  was  evident  that  each  subject,  to  be  covered  ade- 
quately, would  require  the  investigator's  time  for  more  than 
the  remaining  four  weks.  A  request  was  therefore  made  to 
several  state  and  national  organizations,  which  sooner  or  later 
would  be  conducting  investigations  of  their  own  in  Syracuse, 
to  send  their  representatives  at  once.  They  would  thus  co- 
operate with  the  survey,  and  on  the  other  hand  they  would 
gain  for  their  own  work  through  the  strong  local  backing 
afforded  in  the  central  survey  committee.  A  number  of 
organizations  responded  immediately,  among  them  the  New 
York  Child  Labor  Committee,  the  North  American  Civic 
League  for  Immigrants,  the  National  Housing  Association, 
the  National  Consumers'  League  and  the  National  Prison 
Labor  Committee.  In  addition  to  this  outside  co-operation  a 
score  of  Syracuse  people  volunteered  their  services  as  a  per- 
sonal contribution  to  the  survey — among  them  a  young  physi- 
cian, who  made  the  study  of  the  city's  vital  statistics ;  a  young 
rabbi,  who  prepared  a  statement  of  playground  equipment  and 
needs ;  the  secretary  of  the  associated  charities,  who  took 
charge  of  the  housing  investigation ;  an  official  of  the  city  sew- 
erage commission,  who  prepared  a  summary  of  the  sewerage 
situation;  the  probation  officers,  who  studied  juvenile  delin- 
quency ;  a  young  lawyer,  who  gathered  data  on  relief  work  in 


SURVEY  OF  A  TYPICAL  AMERICAN  CITY.  21 

the  city;  students  in  a  sociology  class  in  the  university,  who 
aided  in  the  investigation  of  child  labor  in  the  street  trades; 
and  others  who  made  maps  and  charts,  arranged  exhibits, 
offered  prizes  or  acted  as  judges.  The  liberal  co-operation  of 
the  newspapers  was  invaluable. 

A  work-program  indicating  data  to  be  gathered  on  each 
major  subject  was  worked  out  by  the  different  investigators 
and  the  survey  director;  and  the  latter  spent  the  remainder 
of  his  time  investigating  several  phases  of  labor  conditions.  As 
already  indicated,  the  reports  were  not  expected  to  be  analyses 
of  many  or  all  sides  of  the  subjects  inquired  into;  they  were  to 
take  up  only  those  matters  which  seemed  to  call  for  immediate 
action  or  which  pointed  the  need  for  more  extended  study. 
The  outlines  of  facts  to  be  looked  for,  however,  covered  a  range 
wide  enough  to  allow  the  different  investigators  some  degree 
of  latitude  in  deciding,  as  they  got  deeper  into  the  fact-gather- 
ing, what  matters  should  be  given  special  scrutiny.  Several 
of  the  work-programs  follow : 

A.     HEALTH  AND  ITS  CONSERVATION. 

I.     Vital  statistics 

a.  General  death  rates  for  1907-08-09-10-11;  and  aver- 
age  death   rates    for   five-year  periods   running  back   twenty 
years;  infant  death  rates,  same  period. 

b.  Distribution  of  deaths  by  wards,  for  1910. 

c.  Population  by  age  and  sex  in  each  ward,  in  1910. 

d.  Deaths  from  the  more  prevalent  diseases  for  the  last 
ten  years,  especially  contagious  and  preventable  diseases  such 
as  typhoid,  tuberculosis,  diarrhea  and  enteritis  (under  one  and 
under  five  years  of  age),  and  pneumonia. 

e.  Case  rates  of  the  diseases  more  prevalent  locally  for 
the  last  ten  years — especially  contagious  and  preventable  dis- 
eases,   such   as    diphtheria,    typhoid,    measles,    scarlet    fever, 
tuberculosis. 

f .  Births  :     reporting  of ;  still  births  ;  birth   rates  com- 
pared with  other  cities  of  similar  size  and  population  make-up. 


22  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

II.  Health  administration 

a.  Effect  of  administering  health  work  through  a  su- 
bordinate bureau  of  the  department  of  public  safety,  instead 
of  through  a  department  of  health;  adequacy  or  inadequacy 
of  health  appropriations. 

b.  Educational  work  for  health ;  any  special  needs ;  op- 
portunities for  increasing  educational  work  as  shown  by  work 
done  in  other  cities. 

c.  Organized  work  against  venereal  diseases;  its  chief 
needs ;   work  done  by   Syracuse   Society   for   Prevention   of 
Social  Diseases. 

d.  Quarantine  practise   in  less   serious   contagious   dis- 
eases. 

e.  Medical  inspection  of  schools;  how  adequate?    In  all 
schools?    How  financed? 

III.  Food  inspection 

a.     Meat,  fruit,  fish. 

a.     Screening  from  flies. 

c.  Milk  supply;  analysis  of  bacteriological  count  from 
January  i  to  July  i,  1911;  percentage  of  producers  whose 
milk  was  above  the  maximum  bacterial  count;  method  of  en- 
forcing the  milk  rule ;  any  licenses  revoked ;  analysis  of  cream 
count;  need  of  better  publicity  work  on  milk  and  cream  scor- 
ing. 

IV.  Water  supply 

a.  Source  of  general  supply;  water  sheds;  cost. 

b.  Surface  wells ;  springs. 

V.  Sewerage  system 

a.  Houses  connected;  open  privy  vaults  not  connected 
with  sewers. 

b.  Location  of  sewer  outlets. 

VI.  Garbage  disposal 

a.  Cost ;  method. 

b.  Location  of  plants. 

c.  Method  of  collection  of  garbage. 


SURVEY  OF  A  TYPICAL  AMERICAN  CITY.  23 

B.     HOUSING  OF  THE  UNSKILLED  WORKERS. 

I.  A  close  study  of  six  typical  districts  where  the  unskilled 

workers  live. 

a.  Apartment  buildings :   number   separate   apartments ; 
material ;  stories  ;  repair ;  halls  ;  fire  escapes  ;  basements. 

b.  Family  apartments  in  the  buildings  (facts  relating  to 
individual  apartments  rather  than  the  whole  building  of  which 
each  apartment  is  a  part)  :  number  of  rooms ;  number  of  fam- 
ilies ;  number  of  adults,  children  and  boarders ;  cleanliness ; 
light ;  ventilation ;  plumbing. 

c.  Water  supply:  location;  number  of  persons  per  tap; 
bath ;  drainage. 

d.  Yards  :  area ;  cleanliness  ;  live  stock ;  alley ;  garbage ; 
rubbish. 

e.  Toilets  :  inside ;  outside ;  cleanliness ;  number  using ; 
sewer  connection. 

f.  Rent. 

II.  Similar  close  study  of  a  few  old  tenement  houses. 

III.  Similar  study  of  a  few  new  apartment  and  tenement 

houses 

To  see  whether  the  new  ones  are  conforming  to  accepted 
principles  of  good  housing,  or  whether  they  are  making  the 
same  mistakes  as  those  made  in  the  old  tenements. 

IV.  Lodging  houses 

Number ;  rooms ;  beds ;  air-space  per  bed ;  charges  for 
lodging. 

V.  A  census  of  the  number  of  open  privy  vaults,  by  wards, 

throughout  the  city. 

C.     FOREIGN  POPULATION. 

I.     Statistics  of  foreign  populations 

a.  Total  number  of  foreigners ;  number  by  nationalities. 

b.  Number,  by  sex  and  age  groups. 

c.  Number  of  families. 


24  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

d.  Number  of  immigrants  by  nationalities,  admitted  to 
New  York  state  during  1909-1910. 

e.  Sex  and  ages  of  same. 

f.  Illiteracy  of  those  14  years  old  and  over. 

g.  Number  of  immigrants,  by  nationalities,  who  arrived 
in  Syracuse  during  1909-1910. 

h.     Number,  by  nationalities,  in  hospitals, 
i.     Number  in  prison. 

j.     Number  in  almshouses ;  number  applying  for  relief 
and  charity. 

II.  Neighborhoods 

a.     Map  showing  foreign  quarters,  by  nationalities. 

III.  Housing  and  lodging  conditions    (made  in  conjunction 

with  general  housing  study) 

a.  Kind  of  lodging. 

b.  Study  of  a  few  old  tenements  in  each  neighborhood. 

c.  Number  of  persons  in  each  house. 

d.  Number  of  lodgers  and  families. 

e.  Number  of  persons  and  beds  in  each  room. 

f.  List   of   lodging   houses    and   number   of   immigrant 
lodgers  in  each  place. 

IV.  Industrial  opportunities 

a.  Industries  employing  foreigners. 

b.  Number,  by  nationalities,  in  each  industry. 

c.  Methods  of  obtaining  work. 

d.  Hours  of  work,  in  general. 

e.  Days  per  week. 

f .  Any  night  work. 

g.  Industries  continuous  through  year, 
h.  Days  worked  yearly  and  quarterly. 

i.     Estimated  average  yearly  wages  for  both  skilled  and 
unskilled  workers. 

V.  Economic  conditions 

a.     Amount  of  money  transmitted  to  different  countries 


SURVEY  OF  A  TYPICAL  AMERICAN  CITY.  25 

during  1909-1910  by  post-office  money  orders;  drafts  on  for- 
eign banks;  express  orders. 

b.  Number  of  local  foreign  bankers. 

c.  Number  of  steamship  ticket  agents. 

d.  Any  need  for  postal  savings  banks? 

e.  Number  of  immigrants  that  own  houses. 

VI.  Educational  opportunities 

a.  Number  and  location  of  public  schools ;  of  evening 
classes ;  of  private  schools. 

b.  Number  of  adults  and  children,  by  nationalities,  at- 
tending evening  schools. 

VII.  Naturalization 

a.  Number  of  applicants  for  first  papers,  by  nationalities, 
for  the  last  five  years. 

b.  Applicants  for  final  papers,  by  nationalities,  for  the 
last  five  years. 

c.  Number  of  final  papers  issued. 

d.  Final  papers  denied. 

e.  Final  papers  still  pending. 

f.  Number  of  naturalized  citizens  who  voted  at  last  few 
elections. 

VIII.  Courts 

a.  Number  of  arrests  and  convictions,  by  ages  and  na- 
tionalities. 

b.  Juvenile  delinquency. 

c.  Interpreters  in  court. 

d.  Shyster  lawyers. 

e.  Any  legal  aid  societies. 

f.  Action  in  accident  cases. 

g.  Ambulance  chasers. 

IX.  Social  agencies  for  betterment,  protection  and  relief. 

a.  Foreign  societies. 

b.  Labor  unions  among  foreigners. 

c.  Civic  clubs  among  foreigners. 


26  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

d.  Settlements. 

e.  Playgrounds  accessible  to  immigrants. 

f.  Public  baths. 

g.  Consuls  or  consular  agents, 
h.  Handicap  of  foreign  women. 

i.     Notaries  public,   midwives   and  doctors,   among   for- 
eigners. 

D.     JUVENILE  DELINQUENCY. 

I.  An  analysis  of  cases  of  juvenile  delinquency,  by  wards 

and  blocks,  throughout  the  city. 

Its  relation  to  the  congestion  of  population  and  the  lack  of 
open  spaces  where  children  may  play. 

II.  Nature  of  offenses 

a.  Proportion  that  are  offenses  against  the  person ;  pro- 
portion offenses  against  property. 

b.  Locality  in  which  offenses  against  property  predomi- 
nate over  offenses  against  person,  and  vice  versa. 

c.  Similarly,  by  nationalities. 

d.  Proportion   that   are   first   offenders ;   proportion   re- 
peaters. 

III.  Individual  conditions 

a.  Age  of  largest  proportion  of  offenders  of  both  sexes. 

b.  Physical  condition — stature  and  weight;  diseased? 

c.  Mental  condition :    proportions  bright,  dull,  defective, 
fearless,  venturesome. 

IV.  Social  environment 

a.  Parental  condition:  proportion  with  both  parents  liv- 
ing; proportion  fatherless,  motherless,  orphans,  illegitimates. 

b.  Condition  of  home :  regular  employment ;  kind  of  em- 
ployment. 

V.  Conclusions 

Remedial    agencies    needed;    playgrounds,    boys'    club, 
library  extension? 


SURVEY  OF  A  TYPICAL  AMERICAN  CITY.  27 

E.     LABOR  CONDITIONS,  GENERAL. 

I.  Wages  of  men  and  women  in  industry 

a.  Weekly  earnings ;  skilled  or  unskilled,  by  trades. 

b.  Annual  earnings. 

c.  Day  labor  or  piece  work,  by  industries. 

d.  Increases  in  pay  in  last  15  years. 

e.  Extra  pay  for  overtime  work. 

f.  Recent  changes  in  hours  per  day  affecting  wages. 

g.  "Speeding"  tendencies,  if  any. 

II.  Hours  of  labor 

a.  Hours  per  day ;  Saturday  hours. 

b.  Days  per  week — any  seven-day  labor  ? 

c.  Extra  time  work. 

d.  Day  work  or  night  work. 

e.  Industry  continuous  through  year.     Days  worked  in 
year. 

f.  How  long  in  the  industry. 

III.  Conditions  of  labor 

a.  Sanitary  conditions  of  plant — ventilation. 

b.  Occupational  diseases. 

c.  Industrial  accidents :  safety  devices ;  settlements   for 
injury  or  death. 

IV.  Organization  of  labor  and  capital. 

a.  Trade  unions. 

b.  Union  of  employers. 

c.  Protective  agencies :   insurance ;   hospitals ;   societies  ; 
legal  aid. 

d.  Avenues  of  expression  regarding  work  conditions. 

V.  Individual  and  home  conditions 

a.  Married;  any  children;  keep  boarders;  other  mem- 
bers of  family  work ;  own  home  ? 

b.  Support  self. 

c.  Save  any  money? 


28  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

d.  Leisure  for  reading  or  recreation. 

e.  Sanitary  conditions  of  home  surroundings. 

VI.     Any  recent  serious  labor  troubles ;  strikes,  lockouts. 

F.     CHILD  LABOR. 

I.  Thoroughness  of  inspection 

a.  Number  of  children  granted  work  certificates,  by  na- 
tionalities. 

b.  Number  found  by  inspectors. 

c.  Number  not  found. 

d.  Number  of  inspectors. 

II.  Newsboys 

a.  Age  classification. 

b.  Violators  of  the  law. 

c.  Earnings. 

d.  Character  of  school  work  done  by  newsboys. 

e.  Newsboys  in  juvenile  court. 

f.  Newsboys  and  truant  school. 

III.  Issuance  and  regulation  of  working  papers 

IV.  Summer  child  workers 

a.  Number  missing  more  than  one  week  of  school. 

b.  Average  time  missed. 

c.  Effect  on  scholarship. 

V.  Night  messenger  law 

VI.  Hours,  pay,  regulation,  among  child  workers 

a.  Bootblacks. 

b.  Pin  boys  in  bowling  alleys. 

c.  Morning  paper  carriers. 

d.  Child  workers  in  home  industry. 

The  outline  on  betterment  agencies  laid  special  emphasis 
upon  the  investment  in  equipment,  the  cost  of  relief  work,  and 
the  social  responsibility  felt  by  church,  school,  university, 
hospital,  Christian  associations  and  settlements ;  and  the  out- 


SURVEY  OF  A  TYPICAL  AMERICAN  CITY.  29 

line  on  civic  improvement  covered  the  need  of  a  city  plan, 
directions  of  the  city's  growth,  recreation  needs,  park  and 
playground  facilities,  the  elimination  erf  grade  crossings  and 
the  improvement  of  water  fronts. 

As  the  investigations  progressed  the  mass  of  data  collected 
began  to  show  cleavages  along  certain  clear-cut  lines;  and  by 
autumn  after  the  several  reports  were  drafted  the  central  com- 
mittee was  able  to  put  its  finger  upon  what  it  had  reason  to 
believe  to  be  the  weak  spots  in  local  civic  and  social  conditions. 

In  order  to  give  the  findings  of  the  survey  wide  local  pub- 
licity the  central  committee  determined  to  have  a  Know-Your- 
City-Week  last  November.  The  week  started  off  with  forty 
ministers  preaching  sermons,  on  Sunday  morning,  on  the  civic 
responsibilities  of  citizenship.  On  Monday  exercises  were  held 
in  the  public  schools,  the  main  feature  being  the  reading  of 
prize  essays  written  by  the  children  of  the  schools  on  "How  to 
Make  Syracuse  a  Better  City."  Over  1000  essays  were  written 
and  the  dominant  note  struck  in  the  essays  indicated  that  the 
children  had  caught  the  point  that  a  better  city  involves  not  only 
greater  business  prosperity  but  the  betterment  of  living  and 
work  conditions ;  in  other  words,  that  emphasis  upon  human 
welfare,  whether  through  better  sanitation  and  public  health 
regulations,  better  houses  to  live  in,  safer  places  to  work  in, 
or  greater  opportunities  for  self -improvement,  is  of  prime  im- 
portance in  city  advance.  The  survey  committee  regarded 
the  essay  contest  as  one  of  the  best  achievements  of  the  whole 
enterprise.  On  the  other  afternoons  throughout  the  week, 
conferences  on  concrete  local  problems  were  held  in  one  of  the 
chambers  of  the  county  court  house.  In  the  main,  the  subjects 
were  closely  related  to  those  discussed  at  the  respective  evening 
meetings ;  and  the  discussions  were  led  and  participated  in  by 
representative  citizens,  upon  the  shoulders  of  many  of  whom 
the  work  of  carrying  out  reform  measures  advocated  by  the 
committee  would  undoubtedly  fall. 

At  the  evening  mass  meetings,  which  were  attended  by  an 
average  of  500  persons  per  night,  the  survey  reports  were  read 
from  the  platform ;  and  speakers  from  out  of  the  city  pointed 
the  moral  of  local  findings  from  the  vantage  point  of  a  national 
perspective.  One  of  these  meetings,  the  one  which  probably 


3o  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

involved  the  greatest  outlay  of  both  time  and  money,  was  com- 
pletely taken  charge  of  by  the  physicians  of  the  local  Academy 
of  Medicine.  The  larger  audience  reached,  of  course,  was 
through  the  medium  of  the  newspapers,  which  co-operated 
thoroughly.  Several  of  the  reports  were  reproduced  in  full  by 
the  press.  Further  publicity  for  the  facts  was  gained  through 
the  exhibit  of  maps,  charts,  and  diagrams  showing  graphically 
the  kernel  of  each  report.  The  exhibit  occupied  sixty  feet  of 
window  space  of  a  retail  store  on  one  of  the  most  prominenf 
street  corners  in  the  city. 

With  reports  in  hand  the  central  committee  formulated 
seven  resolutions  as  a  preliminary  working  program  for  the 
city,  which  would  not  be  partisan,  sectarian  or  sectional,  but 
would  aim  at  healthy  industrial  and  social  growth.  In  an 
eighth  resolution  the  committee  sent  back  to  the  bodies  which 
created  it,  and  which  it  jointly  represented,  a  recommendation 
that  they  take  action  to  see  that  the  program  is  entered  upon. 
The  resolutions  are  as  follows : 

First,  that  the  mayor  and  common  council  be  urged  to 
establish  a  city-planning  and  housing  commission  to  secure  a 
plan  for  the  city's  growth  and  development,  and  draw  up  a 
housing  code  such  as  would  meet  the  needs  of  the  city  for 
some  time  to  come. 

Second,  that  the  board  of  education  be  petitioned  to  con- 
sider and  adopt  a  far-reaching  plan  for  the  education  of  the 
foreign  population  of  the  city  by  a  larger  provision  of  night 
schools,  by  the  introduction  of  civics  and  industrial  courses  in 
night  schools  and  by  the  extension  of  vocational  training  to 
the  grades. 

Third,  that  the  police  and  school  departments  be  petitioned 
to  enforce  the  child-labor  laws  relative  to  the  street  trades. 

Fourth,  that  the  board  of  health  be  petitioned  to  provide : 

(a)  For  the  inspection  of  mercantile  establishments  and 
for  the  enforcement  of  those  provisions  relating  to  child  labor, 
hours  of  work  of  women,  and  sanitary  conditions  under  which 
such  people  work. 

(b)  For  the  publishing  monthly  of  the  milk  score  of  all 
milk  producers  whose  milk  is  sold  in  the  city. 


SURVEY  OF  A  TYPICAL  AMERICAN  CITY.  31 

(c)  For  more  rigid  inspection  of  tenements. 

(d)  For  the  engagement  by  the  city  of  the  services  of 
some  sanitarian  of  national  standing  to  study  and  report  on  the 
needs  of  the  public  health  of  Syracuse,  as  a  basis  for  planning 
future  health  work. 

Fifth,  that  the  employers  engaged  in  such  industries  as 
require  the  plant  to  be  in  continuous  operation  be  urged  to 
make  such  adjustments  as  to  assure  every  laborer  one  day  of 
rest  in  seven. 

Sixth,  that  there  should  be  among  the  betterment  agencies 
of  the  city  a  closer  co-operation  expressed  in  some  system,  such 
as  a  united  charities,  a  social-service  league  or  an  associated 
charities  organized  on  broader  lines  than  those  in  existence  at 
present. 

Seventh,  that  the  city  at  large  have  some  organization  to 
study  the  needs  and  development  of  the  city  and  to  crystallize 
the  findings  of  such  studies  in  some  yearly  program  such  as 
this  Know-Your-City-Week. 

Eighth,  that  to  accomplish  this  end  the  central  survey  com- 
mittee recommend  to  the  respective  bodies  represented  in  the 
committee  the  formation  of  a  comprehensive  and  democratic 
body  to  study  the  problems  and  promote  the  adoption  of  the 
reforms  suggested  by  the  survey. 

In  the  few  months  since  the  resolutions  were  adopted,  the 
central  committee  has  succeeded  in  getting  local  organizations 
of  one  kind  and  another  to  back  up  nearly  all  of  the  resolutions 
and  to  carry  on  a  definite  campaign  for  the  changes  advocated 
in  them.  Several  of  these  campaigns  have  already  succeeded 
and  the  success  of  others  is  believed  by  the  committee  to  be 
sure.  A  few  of  the  results  may  be  enumerated: 

The  mayor  has  publicly  promised  to  appoint  a  city-plan- 
ning  and  housing  commission.  In  the  meantime  a  volunteer 
city-plan  commission  is  at  work.  A  committee  of  the  board 
of  education  and  a  volunteer  committee  are  at  work  gathering 
information  from  all  over  the  country  as  to  effective  school 
work  for  foreigners.  The  police  are  thoroughly  enforcing  laws 
regulating  the  work  of  newsboys.  The  bureau  of  health  has 
of  its  own  accord  invited  a  trained  sanitarian  to  the  city  to  go 


3 2  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

over  its  work  and  to  make  suggestions,  and  those  who  have 
been  watching  the  milk  scores  state  that  they  have  shown 
marked  improvement  this  winter  over  a  year  ago.  A  federa- 
tion of  all  betterment  agencies  in  the  city  is  being  formed  with 
enthusiastic  general  co-operation.  A  further  survey,  by  ex- 
perts from  the  New  York  Bureau  of  Municipal  Research,  as 
already  noted,  has  been  made,  and  it  is  planned  that  other  in- 
vestigations shall  be  carried  on  by  the  new  federation.  One 
more  or  less  intangible  but  nevertheless  very  real  and  import- 
ant result  is  the  awakened  interest  of  citizens  in  civic  and 
social  affairs  of  the  city. 

This  has  been  accomplished  at  a  total  money  outlay 
amounting  to  only  a  little  above  $1100 — the  investigations  cost- 
ing about  $500  and  the  publicity  work  about  $600. 


A  Sanitary  and  Health  Survey1 

GEORGE  THOMAS  PALMER,  M.  D. 

Springfield,  Illinois. 

ON  account  of  the  gratifying  results  in  public  health  work 
during  the  past  few  years,  and  on  account  of  the  popu- 
lar interest  born  of  the  realization  of  our  ability 
actually  to  reduce  morbidity  and  increase  the  span  of  life,  it  is 
easier  to  bring  about  public  health  reform  in  an  American 
municipality  than  to  secure  any  other  kind  of  civic  improve- 
ment. 

Jealous  as  they  are  of  personal  liberty,  the  people  have 
come  to  recognize  that  they  must  submit  to  a  certain  amount  of 
inconvenience  and  even  to  scrutiny  and  investigation  of  their 
lives  and  personal  affairs  in  the  interest  of  the  health  of  the 
community.  The  business  man  who  is  not  in  sympathy  with 
many  social  reforms  appreciates  the  practical  utility  of  sanitary 
and  public  health  supervision. 

We  have  ceased  to  question  the  right  of  health  authorities 
to  extend  their  operations  even  far  beyond  the  letter  of  the 
law,  while  opposition  to  private  agencies  working  for  sanitary 
betterment,  even  when  accompanied  by  wide  publicity  of 
unenviable  civic  conditions,  is  usually  inconsiderable.  The 
intelligent  portion  of  the  community  is  fully  capable  of  appre- 
ciating the  benefits  to  be  derived  from  such  activities. 

Hence,  the  sanitary  survey  may  often  be  employed  as  an 
entering  wedge  in  general  civic  betterment,  leading  naturally  to 
increased  interest  in  those  other  agencies  for  improvement 
which  extend  more  intimately  into  the  moral  and  social  lives  of 
the  people,  but  all  of  which  are  more  or  less  associated  with 
public  health  work. 

It  is  on  this  account,  in  my  opinion,  that  the  sanitary  sur- 
vey is  the  most  important  phase  of  general  survey  work  just 
at  this  time,  when  municipalities  are  but  beginning  to  recog- 
inze  the  value  of  systematic  study  of  their  underlying  condi- 
tions. 

]Read  at  the  meeting  of  the  Academy  of  Political  Science,  April  18, 


34  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

Further,  I  am  impressed  by  the  fact  that  an  enormous 
field  is  opening  up  in  the  study  of  the  sanitary  and  other  civic 
conditions  in  the  smaller  cities  of  the  nation.  The  muni- 
cipalities ranging  from  10,000  to  100,000  in  population  repre- 
sent an  enormous  number  of  people  and  present  civic  prob- 
lems quite  as  definite,  if  not  so  extensive,  as  those  to  be  found 
in  any  of  the  larger  cities.  And  yet  the  civic  student  may 
find  in  almost  any  of  the  hundreds  of  smaller  American  cities 
an  absolutely  virgin  field  which  so  far  has  been  shamefully 
neglected. 

I  feel  that  I  should  have  no  claim  upon  your  attention  this 
afternoon,  that  I  should  not  be  here  to  present  a  plan  of  survey, 
except  on  account  of  an  experience  which,  it  seems  to  me, 
should  have  been  looked  upon  as  commonplace  enough,  but 
which  appears  to  have  been  regarded  as  somewhat  unusual. 

This  experience  was  the  study  of  the  sanitary  conditions 
of  a  city  of  from  50,000  to  60,000  population  and  the  attain- 
ment of  fairly  satisfactory  results  without  the  expenditure  of 
money.  Before  offering  to  you  a  definite  plan  of  sanitary 
survey,  I  feel  that  it  may  be  worth  while  to  describe  that 
simple  investigation,  the  methods  employed  and  the  results 
attained. 

I  certainly  have  no  intention  here  and  in  the  presence  of 
those  who  have  done  such  brilliant  things  along  those  lines,  of 
discussing  anything  of  the  theory  or  principles  of  survey 
work.  I  would  suggest,  however,  that  perhaps  the  very  bril- 
liancy of  your  accomplishment  has  prevented  many  muni- 
cipalities from  entering  upon  such  undertakings. 

With  the  Pittsburgh  survey  as  the  best  known  if  not  the 
only  generally  known  specimen  of  its  class,  many  persons  have 
come  to  look  upon  the  survey  as  a  gigantic,  technical  and 
complicated  institution,  demanding  a  large  amount  of  expert 
skill  and  considerable  financial  outlay  for  its  accomplishment. 

Wherever  I  have  found  intelligent  city  officials  and  citi- 
zens interested  in  civic  betterment,  I  have  found  an  earnest 
desire  for  more  thorough  knowledge  and  understanding  of 
existing  civic  conditions;  but  a  conviction  that  the  survey  is 
entirely  beyond  the  reach  of  the  average  municipality. 


A  SANITARY  AND  HEALTH  SURVEY.  35 

In  fact,  at  the  time  we  undertook  the  sanitary  study  of 
Springfield,  if  someone  had  suggested  such  a  thing  as  a  "sani- 
tary survey,"  I  should  have  replied  that  we  were  not  in  a  posi- 
tion financially  or  otherwise  for  such  an  ambitious  undertak- 
ing. 

As  it  was,  we  simply  started  out  in  Springfield  to  ascertain 
certain  definite  facts,  and  we  had  not  the  faintest  idea  how  far 
or  where  our  studies  would  carry  us.  We  knew  that  the  city 
had  a  higher  typhoid-fever  mortality  than  other  cities  of  like 
size  and  similarly  situated.  We  knew  that  we  had  houses  and 
tenements  which  served  as  centers  of  infection  of  tuberculosis 
and  other  diseases.  We  realized  that  our  infant  mortality  was 
too  high.  We  started  out  simply  with  the  purpose  of  ascertain- 
ing the  causes  of  our  undue  morbidity  and  mortality  that  we 
might  be  enabled  to  take  intelligent  steps  to  decrease  sickness 
and  lower  our  death  rate. 

It  was  not  until  our  work  was  completed  that  we  realized 
we  had  done  anything  which  could  be  dignified  by  the  term 
"sanitary  survey."  I  cite  this  fact  because  I  feel  that  there 
ought  to  be  something  done  to  change  the  general  conception 
of  the  term  "survey"  and  because  I  ani.  convinced  that  we 
must  reach  a  clearer  definition  of  the  term  before  many  cities 
will  undertake  it. 

I  am  also  impressed  with  the  belief  that  when  a  city  sets 
out  to  learn  definite  things  about  itself  and  for  a  definite  pur- 
pose, the  results  will  be  more  satisfactory  than  when  an 
attempt  is  made  merely  to  apply  a  plan  of  study  for  no  better 
reason  than  that  other  cities  have  done  the  same  thing.  That 
is,  the  desire  for  knowledge  without  the  plan  will  come  nearer 
landing  us  somewhere  than  the  plan,  however  perfect,  without 
the  underlying  intelligent  desire  for  knowledge. 

In  the  vaults  of  the  city  hall  we  recently  unearthed  several 
massive  volumes,  the  results  of  a  sanitary  survey  carried  out 
in  1885  on  a  plan  suggested  by  Dr.  John  H.  Rauch,  then  secre- 
tary of  the  Illinois  state  board  of  health.  The  city  council 
appropriated  $1,000  for  the  purpose  and  the  work  was  carried 
out  with  most  minute  detail.  The  net  result  of  this  painstak- 
ing application  of  a  survey  plan  consists  of  these  big,  clumsy 
volumes,  dusty,  moth-eaten  and  stowed  away  in  a  vault.  In 


3  6  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

fact,  when  our  work  was  done  in  1910,  no  one  recalled  that  a 
sanitary  survey  of  the  city  had  ever  been  carried  out.  This  is 
merely  an  example  of  the  city  going  through  the  motions  and 
carrying  out  a  plan  suggested  by  others,  but  without  a  desire 
for  specific  results. 

In  1910  we  awoke  to  the  fact  that  Springfield  had  a  ty- 
phoid-fever mortality  of  something  over  40  per  100,000  popu- 
lation. This  mortality  had  been  as  high  as  8£  per  100,000  and 
the  last  year  recorded  showed  a  mortality  of  52.  That  was 
twice  as  high  as  it  should  have  been.  Half  of  our  deaths  from 
this  disease  were  apparently  unnecessary. 

Four  million  dollars  had  been  expended  by  the  city  for 
water  works  and  sewer  system,  and  the  mains  extended  to  all 
sections  of  the  town.  We  made  repeated  analyses  of  the  city 
water,  extending  over  a  long  period  of  time,  and  found  that 
the  public  supply  was  always  safe  for  domestic  use.  We  had 
to  go  further  to  locate  the  cause  of  our  excessive  typhoid- 
fever  mortality.  Analyses  were  made  of  150  samples  from 
supposedly  good  wells.  All  but  three  were  found  to  be  dan- 
gerously polluted.  Then  the  question  arose  as  to  the  extent 
to  which  wells  were  used  in  the  city  and  the  cause  of  well 
pollution.  On  these  points,  as  is  true  in  practically  every  other 
city  in  the  United  States  where  wells  are  used,  reliable  inform- 
ation was  entirely  unobtainable. 

There  was  but  one  thing  left  to  do  and  that  was  to  have 
the  four  underpaid,  untrained  but  enthusiastic  inspectors  of 
the  health  department  visit  each  of  the  9,000  homes  spread  out 
over  the  1,600  blocks  of  the  city  to  locate  every  well  and  vault 
and  ascertain  the  general  sanitary  conditions  of  all  premises. 
It  required  two  months  to  cover  the  city,  the  work  being 
done  in  addition  to  the  rather  exacting  routine  duties  of  the 
department.  The  results  plainly  told  the  story  of  our  typhoid 
fever. 

The  9,000  homes  of  the  city  had  6,000  shallow  wells,  the 
pollution  of  which  was  guaranteed  by  7,000  privy  vaults.  There 
were  6,000  polluted  wells  in  the  city,  and  the  water  mains  and 
sewers  were  convenient  to  5,000  of  the  premises  that  main- 
tained them.  That  is,  the  use  of  5,000  of  the  6,000  polluted 
wells  in  the  city  was  entirely  unnecessary.  From  a  sanitary 


A  SANITARY  AND  HEALTH  SURVEY.  37 

standpoint  the  city's  expenditure  of  $4,000,000  was  wasted. 

I  should  make  this  statement  about  my  home  town  with 
reluctance  were  it  not  that  Mr.  Hiram  Messenger  has  advised 
me,  after  studying  the  typhoid  conditions  of  over  thirty  cities 
of  from  40,000  to  100,000  people,  that  Springfield  is  now  the 
only  one  in  which  he  could  obtain  accurate  data  as  to  wells 
and  well  pollution. 

The  results  of  our  investigation  were  not  bound  in  red 
morocco  and  filed  away  to  decay,  nor  were  they  hopelessly 
buried  in  dreary  and  unread  reports.  We  prepared  a  large 
map  of  the  city,  large  enough  to  show  each  house  by  number 
and  the  gross  sanitary  conditions  of  all  premises.  Each  un- 
sanitary lot  was  shown  in  red  and  every  well,  vault,  sewer, 
water  main,  vacant  lot,  business  property  and  public  building 
was  indicated  by  symbol  or  color. 

We  knew  the  facts;  but  we  had  to  demonstrate  them  to 
get  results.  The  map  was  shown  at  a  luncheon  to  three 
hundred  members  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce,  with  a  talk 
on  "The  Truth  About  Springfield."  The  business  men  en- 
dorsed our  work  and  the  newspapers  gave  the  facts  wide 
publicity.  Next  the  map  was  hung  in  the  council  chamber 
and  the  members  of  the  city  council  were  shown  why  we 
should  have  ordinances  compelling  property  holders  to  con- 
nect their  property  with  sewers  and  water  mains.  The  ordi- 
nances were  passed  in  three  weeks,  although  we  had  vainly 
sought  to  secure  such  ordinances  for  over  two  years. 

Then  another  interesting  thing  developed.  Protest  on  the 
part  of  the  business  men  gave  way  to  serious  consideration. 
The  work  had  gone  too  far  to  be  stopped  and  it  became  the 
part  of  wisdom  to  fall  in  line  with  it.  Real-estate  men  adver- 
tised their  property  on  its  sanitary  merits  and  money  became 
harder  to  borrow  on  unsanitary  property.  For  the  first  time 
in  the  community,  sanitation  took  on  a  commercial  value. 

But  the  Springfield  sanitary  survey — if  you  choose  to 
dignify  it  by  that  name — went  a  little  further  than  a  mere  cen- 
sus of  wells  and  vaults.  During  the  house-to-house  canvass 
the  inspectors  made  notes  of  all  unsanitary  conditions  and  all 
nuisances  and  these  were  ordered  remedied  and  abated. 


3 8  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

They  also  noted  all  tenements  and  bad  housing  conditions 
and  the  data  furnished  by  them  along  this  line  afforded  the 
basis  for  the  housing  investigations  we  have  since  carried  on. 
We  have  studied,  charted  out  and  photographed  the  worst  con- 
ditions in  the  city  and  we  are  now  ready  to  do  our  part  in  con- 
vincing the  Illinois  General  Assembly  that  there  are  slums  in 
the  smaller  cities  and  that  there  is  a  crying  need  for  good  state 
housing  laws. 

In  this  housing  investigation  we  took  a  tuberculosis  census 
of  the  worst  tenements  and  fumigated  and  disinfected  as  far 
as  possible.  We  succeeded  in  improving  the  conditions  of  the 
worst  tenements ;  but  lack  of  state  laws  made  satisfactory 
action  impossible. 

As  I  have  stated,  we  were  making  this  investigation  en- 
tirely without  a  plan  or  system.  Each  undertaking  when  com- 
pleted had  pointed  out  something  else  that  required  attention, 
and  at  this  juncture  we  found  a  new  force  urging  us  on. 
That  was  an  aroused  public  interest.  The  better  element  of 
the  people  were  watching  to  see  what  we  would  do  next  and 
the  four  daily  newspapers  of  the  city  backed  up  our  work  and 
featured  everything  that  was  undertaken.  This  aroused  inter- 
est was  sufficient  to  hush  all  opposition. 

We  were  now  ready  to  consider  our  infant  mortality.  Our 
first  effort  was  in  the  direction  of  an  honest  milk,  containing  a 
reasonable  butter  fat  and  total  solids  and  free  from  preserva- 
tives. We  recognized,  however,  that  this  was  a  commercial 
rather  than  a  public  health  proposition. 

We  realized  that  "the  amount  of  manure  a  milk  contains 
is  more  important  than  the  amount  of  butter  fat"  and  we 
determined  to  visit  and  inspect  all  of  the  dairies  supplying 
milk  to  the  city.  In  this  tour  of  inspection  we  attempted  to 
teach  the  dairymen  and  farmers  the  prerequisites  of  pure  and 
clean  milk;  but  we  warned  all  of  them  that  inspections  would 
be  made  from  time  to  time  and  that  the  conditions  of  all 
dairies  would  be  made  a  matter  of  public  record  open  to  milk 
consumers. 

This  investigation  of  dairies  was  followed  by  inspection 
of  restaurants  and  bakeries,  the  details  of  which  cannot  in- 


A  SANITARY  AND  HEALTH  SURVEY.  39 

terest  you  here.  The  results,  however,  were  gratifying  to 
us. 

We  are  now  engaged  upon  an  investigation  of  garbage 
collection  and  disposal,  studying  our  own  conditions  and  the 
methods  of  other  cities.  We  are  trying  to  solve  what  I  am 
inclined  to  regard  as  the  livest  public  health  problem  of 
American  municipalities — a  problem,  incidentally,  which  is 
not  yet  solved  ideally  by  even  the  largest  of  cities. 

The  Springfield  sanitary  survey  is  not  complete,  nor  will 
it  be  for  several  years  to  come.  We  are  studying  the  town 
part  by  part  and  we  are  preserving  all  of  our  data  in  the  hope 
that  we  may  be  able  some  day  to  show  a  complete  sanitary 
survey  of  a  smaller  city.  But  every  step  is  being  taken  with  a 
definite  plan  in  view.  We  have  to  produce  results,  and  results 
that  we  can  show  the  people. 

The  people,  as  a  rule,  will  give  active  co-operation  to  work 
of  this  kind.  They  will  be  tolerant  of  criticism  of  local  con- 
ditions. But  after  a  while  they  will  meet  you  with  the  es- 
sentially practical  and  entirely  proper  demand,  "Now  that 
you  have  given  us  all  this  undesirable  publicity,  what  have 
you  accomplished?"  Incidentally,  they  are  not  to  be  satisfied 
with  a  story  of  "interesting  data."  The  only  way  you  can 
safely  use  a  town  as  clinical  material  is  to  cure  its  sores. 

For  twelve  years  the  average  mortality  from  typhoid  fever 
in  Springfield  had  been  something  over  40  per  100,000  popula- 
tion. In  1910,  the  year  our  investigation  was  undertaken,  it 
was  52.  In  1911,  the  year  after  our  agitation  of  polluted  wells 
and  the  passage  of  sanitary  ordinances,  our  typhoid  mortality 
was  in  the  twenties.  The  record  of  one  year  is  not  conclusive. 
Such  a  result  immediately  following  sanitary  agitation,  how- 
ever, is  suggestive  and  encouraging. 

In  1909,  sixty-eight  infants  died  from  summer  diarrhea; 
in  1910,  even  after  we  had  a  good  commercial  milk  supply, 
there  were  sixty-four  deaths.  In  1911,  after  our  dairy  inspec- 
tions, there  were  forty-one  deaths.  This  may  be  coincidence, 
but  it  is  suggestive. 

My  only  excuse  for  burdening  you  with  the  details  of  our 
work  in  a  small  mid-western  town  is  to  make  you  realize  that 
the  small  town  has  real  sanitary  and  public  health  problems 


40  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

unappreciated  by  the  people,  to  demonstrate  that  reasonably 
good  results  may  be  attained  without  an  elaborate  plan  and 
without  any  considerable  expenditure  of  money.  The  same 
excuse  will  justify  this  additional  detail. 

The  collection  of  data  in  our  work  was  entrusted  to  four 
inspectors,  already  overworked,  and  receiving  $60  per  month 
— men  entirely  without  sanitary  training  and  three  of  them 
with  little  more  than  ward-school  education.  They  have 
served  as  sanitary  inspectors,  dairy  inspectors,  housing  inspec- 
tors, as  conditions  required,  their  only  instruction  being  such 
as  we  could  give  them;  but  each  man  being  fully  informed  as 
to  what  we  were  trying  to  do  and  why. 

In  addition  to  the  salaries  of  these  inspectors,  which  had 
been  paid  from  time  immemorial,  the  total  cost  of  the  survey 
and  the  sanitary  map  to  the  city  of  Springfield  was  less  than 
$100. 

There  is  but  one  other  thought  in  connection  with  our 
sanitary  study.  We  were  after  a  direct  result,  the  reduction 
of  morbidity  and  mortality.  We  are  encouraged  to  believe 
that  we  have  accomplished  at  least  enough  to  justify  the 
effort.  But  we  now  feel  that  we  see  other  results  more  grati- 
fying and  far-reaching  than  we  had  anticipated. 

Our  work  had  been  accompanied  by  unrestrained  pub- 
licity. We  accentuated  the  civic  needs  of  the  city  in  every 
possible  way  and  we  feel  that  we  perhaps  stimulated  others 
to  activity  in  their  individual  lines.  We  had  demonstrated, 
perhaps,  that  civic  improvement  was  not  so  difficult  to  bring 
about  as  had  been  generally  believed  and  we  had  possibly 
stimulated  a  general  spirit  of  investigation. 

At  any  rate,  whether  our  sanitary  investigations  had  any- 
thing to  do  with  it  or  not,  a  great  many  things  have  come 
about  during  the  past  two  years.  A  detention  home  has 
removed  children  from  the  jail  and  has  simplified  the  work  of 
an  excellent  trained  probation  officer.  A  tuberculosis  associa- 
tion of  1,000  members  operates  a  dispensary  and  employs 
visiting  nurses.  Medical  inspection  of  school  children  is  estab- 
lished. The  almshouse  of  Sangamon  County  is  being  thor- 
oughly studied  from  a  medical  and  sociological  standpoint  and 
provision  is  being  made  for  county  care  of  indigent  consump- 


A  SANITARY  AND  HEALTH  SURVEY.  41 

tives.  The  dispensing  of  county  charity  has  been  placed  in 
better  hands.  But  most  important,  the  people  are  awakened 
to  the  necessity  of  a  thorough  knowledge  of  local  conditions, 
and  a  broad  and  sweeping  survey  of  the  city — a  real  survey 
this  time — is  being  considered  and  is  practically  assured. 

The  experience  in  Springfield,  the  gratifying  results 
attained  without  the  employment  of  expert  skill,  has  made  me 
believe  that  similar  results  may  be  attained  by  other  cities 
either  through  the  agency  of  their  health  departments  or 
through  the  activities  of  private  agencies.  The  survey  in 
Springfield  was  carried  out  without  a  definite  plan  of  action, 
and  the  following  scheme  of  study  was  the  result  rather  than 
the  foundation  of  the  work. 

Unquestionably  a  well  defined  plan  will  serve  to  simplify 
the  survey,  will  render  it  more  systematic  and  will  prevent 
ineffective  labor  in  various  directions.  The  one  submitted 
here  is  little  more  than  a  skeleton  in  the  elaboration  of  which 
we  are  now  engaged.  It  may  serve  in  its  present  form,  how- 
ever, to  suggest  a  rather  simple  and  consecutive  line  of  action 
which  will  prove  helpful  to  those  about  to  engage  in  work  of 
the  kind. 

SCHEME  OF  A  SANITARY  SURVEY. 

I.     STUDY  OF  MORBIDITY  AND  MORTALITY  FROM  COMMUNI- 
CABLE DISEASES. 

No  intelligent  work  to  reduce  morbidity  and  mortality 
can  be  undertaken  until  we  know  the  present  morbidity  and 
mortality  and  the  averages  for  several  years  past. 

In  most  instances  morbidity  from  communicable  diseases 
may  be  ascertained  from  the  records  of  the  local  health  depart- 
ment. Such  records,  however,  are  frequently  faulty  and  in- 
complete. Under  such  circumstances,  the  present  morbidity 
may  generally  be  estimated  after  interviewing  all  members  of 
the  local  medical  profession.  Morbidity  records  for  the  past 
will  be  unattainable. 

Mortuary  records  for  many  years  past  should  be  obtained 
from  the  local  health  department.  If  the  municipality  has  no 
registration  of  deaths,  the  desired  data  can  usually  be  obtained 


42  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

from  the  state  registrar  of  vital  statistics  or  from  the  state 
board  of  health. 

After  securing  the  present  and  past  average  mortality 
from  preventable  diseases,  these  should  be  compared  with 
similar  figures  from  other  municipalities  as  near  the  size  and 
existing  under  as  nearly  the  same  conditions  as  possible. 
Much  valuable  information  for  purposes  of  comparison  may  be 
obtained  from  the  last  reports  of  the  United  States  Census 
Office  dealing  with  mortality  statistics.  It  is  only  by  such 
comparison  of  figures  that  we  can  determine  whether  the  local 
mortality  is  higher  than  it  should  be. 

1.  Diseases  to  be  Studied — (a)  Typhoid  fever;  (b)  tubercu- 

losis; (c)  malaria;  (d)  yellow  fever;  (e)  small-pox • 
(f)  chicken-pox;  (g)  diphtheria;  (h)  scarlet  fever; 
(i)  measles;  (j)  whooping  cough ;  (k)  industrial  diseases 
peculiar  to  the  community;  (1)  summer  diarrhea  of  in- 
fants; (m)  accidental  deaths. 

2.  Sources  of  Information — Local  health  department ;  state 

health  department ;  local  physicians ;  report  of  United 
States  Census  Bureau. 

NOTES — Seek  out  the  cause  for  every  decided  deviation  from 
the  normal  or  average  mortality.  Such  deviations  are  at 
times  due  to  outside  influences  bearing  in  no  way  upon 
local  sanitary  conditions. 

Ascertain  total  mortuary  figures.  Do  not  accept  death 
estimates  in  percentages.  One  death  in  the  community 
may  affect  the  rate  100  per  cent. 

II.     WATER  SUPPLY  AND  SEWAGE  DISPOSAL. 
(Special  relation  to  typhoid  fever.) 
i.    Source  of  Municipal  Water  Supply 

(a)  Results  of  last  analyses. 

A  single  analysis  should  not  be  accepted  as  final. 
Conditions  in  an  unprotected  supply  often  change 
from  season  to  season. 

(b)  Possible  pollution  of  the  public  supply  at  source. 

Information  should  be  obtained   from  the  mu- 


A  SANITARY  AND  HEALTH  SURVEY.  43 

nicipal  water  company,  the  local  water  depart- 
ment or  the  local  health  department.  It  would 
be  well  to  inspect  personally  the  source  of  supply. 

NOTE — If  analyses  have  not  been  made,  samples  should  be 
secured  and  sent  to  laboratories  for  analysis.  In  several 
states,  the  state  water  survey,  the  state  university  or  other 
state  departments  will  make  analyses  of  local  water  sup- 
plies without  charge.  Reliance  should  not  be  placed  on 
the  so-called  "simple  water  tests." 

2.  Private  Wells 

(a)  Extent  to  which  they  are  used.  (If  used  at  all,  it  will 

be  impossible  to  ascertain  the  extent  without  a 
house-to-house  canvass.  The  same  is  true  with 
privy  vaults.  See  below.) 

(b)  Analysis  of  water  from  presumably  good  wells. 

It  is  never  worth  .while  to  make  analyses  of 
water  from  wells  which  are  obviously  polluted. 

3.  Privy  Vaults  (Important  on  account  of  pollution  of  wells) 

(a)  Extent  to  which  used 

(b)  Enforcement  of  ordinances  or  regulations  as  to  the 
distance  of  vaults  from  wells  or  cisterns. 

(c)  General  construction  of  vaults  to  prevent  soil  pollu- 
tion. 

4.  Sewer  System 

(a)  Extent  throughout  the  city. 

Location  of  those  sections  not  reached  by  sewer. 

(b)  Location  of  outlets  of  sewers. 

(i)     Danger  to  people  of  this  community, 
(ii)    Danger  to  other  municipalities. 

(c)  Extent  to  which  sewers  are  used  by  those  to  whom 

they  are  available. 

NOTE — Information  as  to  the  sewer  system  and  the  sewer  out- 
lets may  be  obtained  from  the  city  engineer  or  the  depart- 
ment of  public  works.  The  extent  to  which  sewers  are 
used  by  those  to  whom  they  are  available  can  often  be 
determined  only  by  house-to-house  canvas's. 


44  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

5.  Methods  of  Sewage  Disposal 

(a)  Is  sewage  "treated"  before  discharge  or  is  it  dis- 

charged in  its  raw  state?     If  treated,  what  is  the 
method  of  treatment? 

(b)  Present  and  future  dangers  of  the  system  employed. 

6.  Pollution  of  Soil 

(a)  By  privy  vaults. 

(b)  By  polluted  ponds  or  streams  receiving  sewage. 

(c)  By  sewers  with  loose  joints. 

(d)  By  tile  or  surface  drains.    Private  sewers. 

III.     ALLEYS. 

(  Special  relation  to  fly-borne  diseases ;  nuisances  from  de- 
composition of  organic  waste  matter;  dust  and  mosquitoes.) 
Remember  that,  as  a  general  principle,  the  alley  belongs 
to  the  muncipality  and  that  it  is  unlawful  to  place  ashes, 
manure,  garbage  or  any  other  material  therein. 

1.  Ashes 

(a)  Extent  to  which  they  are  placed  in  alleys.    Loose  or 

in  containers. 

(b)  Disposal  of  ashes. 

2.  Manure  (breeding  place  for  flies) 

(a)  Extent  to  which  it  is  placed  in  alleys. 

(b)  Loose  or  in  tight,  screened  boxes. 

(c)  Frequency  with  which  it  is  removed. 

To  guarantee  against  the  breeding  of  flies,  ma- 
nure should  be  removed  at  least  once  a  week 
from  alleys  and  premises, 
(c)  Disposal  of  manure. 

(i)     Dumps  (sources  of  danger.) 

(ii)    Burned. 

(iii)  Distribution  to  farmers  for  fertilizer. 

In  some  cities  this  is  carried  out  system- 
atically and  satisfactorily. 

3.  Garbage  (nuisance  and  flies) 

Presence  in  alleys  (see  Section  IV) 


A  SANITARY  AND  HEALTH  SURVEY.  45 

4.    Alley  Grade 

Drainage  into  yards. 

Low  places  breeding-ground  of  mosquito. 

Permitting  the  use  of  alleys  for  even  the  tem- 
porary disposal  of  ashes  often  results  in  raising 
the  grade  of  the  alley  above  that  of  surrounding 
property,  causing  the  water  to  drain  into  nearby 
yards. 

NOTE — In  the  house-to-house  canvass  proposed  in  this  plan,  all 
bad  alley  conditions  should  be  noted  and  reported  to  the 
health  department  or  to  the  department  of  streets  and 
alleys. 

IV.     GARBAGE  DISPOSAL. 

("The  livest  public  health  problem  of  American  munici- 
palities.") 

(Special  relation  to  fly-borne  diseases,  soil  pollution. 
Dumps  bear  a  close  relation  to  contagious  diseases.) 

1.  Handling  Garbage  at  Home 

(a)  Are  special  cans  or  retainers  required? 

(b)  Destroying  garbage  at  home. 

(i)    To  what  extent  practised? 
(ii)   Method  employed. 

(c)  Separation  of  refuse  into  garbage,  ashes  and  rubbish. 

(d)  Wrapping  garbage  in  paper    (dry  garbage). 

2.  Collection  of  Garbage 

(a)   Public  or  private  collection. 

(i)     Cost  to  householder. 

(ii)    Frequency  of  collection. 

(iii)   Specially  constructed  garbage  wagons. 

(iv)   Regulations  concerning  collection. 

3.  Disposal  of  Garbage 

(a)  Dumps. 

(i)  Location  of  dumps. 

(ii)  Character  of  waste  taken  to  dumps. 

(iii)  Policing  dumps. 


46  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

NOTES — The  municipality  has  no  more  right  to  permit  the 
dumping  of  decomposable  waste  near  to  the  home  of  a 
citizen  than  it  has  to  empty  its  sewers  near  to  the  home  of 
a  citizen. 

The  recovery  of  articles  from  the  dumps,  as  is  often  done 
by  the  poor,  is  a  common  means  of  carrying  contagious 
diseases  into  those  homes  in  which  such  diseases  are  most 
difficult  to  locate  and  control.  Much  of  the  most  usable 
salvage  in  a  city's  waste  has  been  discarded  on  account  of 
contagious  and  infectious  disease  in  the  home. 

(b)  Feeding  garbage. 

(i)    Distributing  garbage  to  farmers, 
(ii)   Municipal  hog- feeding. 

Not  a  sanitary  or  practicable  plan  in  the 

ordinary  climate. 

(c)  Incineration. 

(i)     Incineration  of  garbage  alone. 

(ii)    Incineration  of  all  waste. 

(iii)   Incineration  with  artificial  fuel. 

(iv)   Burning  garbage  and  other  waste  with  its 

own  combustible  material. 

NOTES — The  ideal  method  of  refuse  disposal  is  incineration  of 
all  kinds  of  waste — garbage,  manure,  ashes  and  rubbish. 
In  this  way  we  avoid  the  necessity  of  dumps  of  any  kind 
in  the  community. 

Ideal  incineration  implies  the  utilization  of  the  fuel  content 
of  the  refuse  itself.  In  this  way  sufficient  heat  may  be 
obtained  to  produce  steam  for  power  in  municipal  plants. 

(d)  Reduction  of  garbage. 

(i)  By  public  or  private  company, 

(ii)  Materials  regained  from  garbage, 

(iii)  Revenues  to  the  city  from  reduction. 

(iv)  Cost  to  the  city. 

V.     STAGNANT  POOLS  AND  OPEN  CISTERNS. 

(Special  relation  to  the  mosquito  and  to  malaria  and  yel- 
low fever.     More  important  in  southern  cities.) 
(a)   Location  of  stagnant  ponds  and  pools. 


A  SANITARY  AND  HEALTH  SURVEY.  47 

(b)  Best  means  of  draining  same. 

(c)  Screening  cisterns. 

VI.    HOUSING. 

(Special  relation  to  tuberculosis,  contagious  diseases,  im- 
morality, physical  inefficiency,  deficient  education,  crime  and 
children.) 

1.  General  Survey  of  Housing 

In  the  house-to-house  survey,  all  bad  housing  conditions 
should  be  located  and  noted  for  future  investigation. 

2.  Intensive  Study  of  Housing 

The  study  of  individual  houses  and  blocks  indicated  in  the 
general  housing  study  as  being  undesirable. 

3.  Yard  space 

(a)   Percentage  of  lot  unoccupied  by  buildings, 
(i)     Grass  and  trees, 
(ii)    Paved. 

(iii)  Drainage  and  sanitary  conditions, 
(iv)  Uses  of  yard  space. 

4.  Light  (A  study  of  each  room  in  undesirable  buildings  used 

for  dwelling  purposes) 

(a)  Outside  rooms. 

(b)  Light  wells. 

(c)  Sky  lights. 

(d)  Dark  rooms  and  uses  of  dark  rooms. 

5.  Ventilation  (Studied  according  to  above  outlined  scheme 

for  light) 

6.  Business  Houses 

Relationship  of  dwellings  or  tenements  to  saloons,  im- 
moral resorts,  business  houses  and  industries.  Dwellings 
over  stables. 

7.  Home  Industries 

8.  Congestion 

(a)   Number  of  inmates. 


48  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

(b)  Room  congestion. 

(c)  Roomers,  boarders,  homes  and  light  housekeeping. 

9.  Water  Supply 

(a)  Source. 

(b)  Convenience  to  living  quarters. 

10.  Sewage 

11.  Condition  of  Plumbing 

This  study  should  include  observation  of  plumbing  condi- 
tions and  facilities  for  ordinary  cleanliness. 

12.  Disposal  of  Garbage  and  Waste 

13.  Nationality  and  National  Traits 

14.  Children 

Number  of  children  in  each  dwelling,  with  note  as  to  the 
manner  in  which  they  live,  association  with  immorality, 
sanitary  conditions,  etc. 

15.  General  Sanitation 

16.  Transient  or  Permanent  Residents 

NOTES — In  collecting  housing  data  the  name  of  the  landlord 
and  agent  of  each  piece  of  property  should  be  obtained. 
Each  dwelling,  building  or  block  studied  should  be  mapped 
or  platted  out. 
Photographs  should  be  obtained  of  the  worst  conditions. 

VII.     RESTAURANTS,  BAKERIES,  BUTCHER  SHOPS. 

I.     Sanitary  Conditions 

(a)  Cleanliness. 

(b)  Plumbing. 

(i)     Condition, 
(ii)    Location  in  relation  to  foodstuffs. 

(c)  Living  quarters  near  to  place  of  food  handling. 

(d)  Protection  from  flies. 

(e)  Health  of  workers  in  foods. 

(f)  Spitting. 

(g)  Care  and  protection  of  food  supplies. 


A  SANITARY  AND  HEALTH  SURVEY.  49 

VIII.     MILK  SUPPLY. 

(Special  relation  to  infant  mortality,  tuberculosis  and  con- 
tagious diseases.) 

1.  Chemical  Content  (Butter  fats  and  total  solids) 

(a)  How  often  tested  by  local  authorities. 

(b)  Collection    from   homes   of   consumers   or   on   open 

market  and  testing  privately. 

(c)  Freedom  from  preservatives. 

A  milk  containing  the  legal  amount  of  fats  and 
solids  and  free  from  preservatives  is  merely  a 
good  commercial  milk.  The  greatest  importance 
attaches  to  the  amount  of  filth  the  milk  contains. 

2.  Dairy  Inspection 

(a)  Health  and  condition  of  cows. 

(i)     General  health, 
(ii)    Tuberculin  testing, 
(iii)  Cleanliness. 
(iv)   Feed. 

(b)  Condition  and  construction  of  barns. 

(c)  Condition  and  cleanliness  of  milk  houses. 

(d)  Conditions  and  method  of  shipping. 

(i)     Cleansing  cans. 

(ii)    Rapid  reduction  of  temperature. 

(iii)   Pasteurization. 

(e)  Water  supply. 

3.  Bottling 

(a)  Sterilization  of  bottles. 

(b)  Hand  or  machine  bottling. 

(c)  Place  of  bottling. 

(i)     At  the  farm  (good). 

(ii)    At  the  milk  depot  (unsatisfactory). 

(iii)  In  the  milk  wagon  (intolerable). 

4.  Health  of  Employes 

Contagious  diseases  are  often  transmitted  by  the  milk  sup- 


5o  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

ply.  Scarlet  fever  and  diphtheria  have  been  traced  back 
to  this  disease  among  milk  handlers  or  their  families. 

5.  Milk  Depots 

Methods  of  handling  milk  and  general  sanitary  conditions. 

6.  Infant  Mortality 

Ascertain  the  source  of  milk  supply  in  all  cases  where 
there  has  been  infant  mortality  in  the  family. 

IX.     METHODS  OF  STUDY. 

1.  House-to-House  Canvass 

This  is  the  foundation  of  every  satisfactory  sanitary  sur- 
vey. Study  each  house  and  yard  and  note  all  wells,  privy 
vaults  and  the  general  sanitary  conditions.  Information 
is  also  gathered  during  this  house-to-house  canvass  upon 
which  to  base  the  future  investigation  of  water  supply 
and  sewage ;  alleys ;  garbage  disposal ;  stagnant  pools  and 
cisterns ;  housing ;  restaurants  and  bakeries. 

2.  Sanitary  Map 

A  large  map  of  the  city  should  be  prepared  with  each  lot 
large  enough  to  show  house  number,  wells,  vaults  and  all 
gross  sanitary  conditions.  This  map  should  also  show  the 
paved  streets,  sewer  system  and  water  mains. 
The  making  of  the  map  teaches  a  great  deal  about  the  city 
as  a  whole  and  brings  together  the  accumulated  data  in  a 
form  which  can  be  shown  to  the  people  or  to  the  city 
officials. 

3.  Study  Water  Supply,  Sewers,  Topography,  etc. 

Study  of  the  data  in  the  office  of  the  city  engineer  and 
department  of  public  works. 

4.  Intensive  Study  of  the  Various  Subdivisions  of  Work 

(a)  Visit  all  dumps  and  garbage-disposal  plants. 

(b)  Study  all  housing  conditions  and  plat  out  all  blocks, 

houses  or  rooms  investigated. 

(c)  Inspect  all  dairies  supplying  milk  to  the  community, 

using  the  government  score  card  as  a  guide. 

(d)  Visit  and  inspect  all  restaurant,  bakeries,  etc. 


A  SANITARY  AND  HEALTH  SURVEY.  51 

X.     STUDY  OF  EXISTING  LAWS  AND  ORDINANCES. 

Study  the  state  laws  under  which  the  municipality  is  given 
its  right  of  public  health  control. 

Study  the  city  ordinances  to  see  what  improvements  can 
be  brought  about  by  merely  enforcing  existing  laws. 

XI.     NEW  ORDINANCES. 

Ascertain  what  faulty  conditions  will  require  new  ordi- 
nances to  bring  about  their  improvement. 
Study  ordinances  of  other  cities  which  are  bringing  about 
satisfactory  results  in  these  lines. 

XII.     STUDY  OF  EXISTING  HEALTH  DEPARTMENT. 

(See  the  standards  of  public  health  efficiency  in  an  article 
by  the  writer,  "The  Inefficiency  of  Municipal  Health  De- 
ments," published  in  The  American  City,  August,  191 1). 

1.  Duties  of  the  Health  Department  under  the  Ordinances 

2.  What  Ordinances  are  not  Enforced?  (Ascertain  why). 

3.  Study  of  Special  Functions  of  the  Department 

(a)  Water  analysis. 

(b)  Milk  inspection. 

(c)  Quarantine. 

(d)  Reports  of  communicable  diseases. 

(e)  Isolation  hospital. 

(f)  Abatement  of  nuisances. 

(g)  Registration  of  vital  statistics, 
(h)  Constructive  work. 

4.  Provisions  for  Efficient  Service 

(a)  Qualifications  of  health  officer. 

(b)  Salary  and  assistants. 

(c)  Reasonable  appropriations. 

(d)  Freedom  from  politics.    Civil  service. 


5 2  ORGANIZATION  FOR  SOCIAL  WORK. 

XIII.     METHODS  OF  PUBLICITY. 

(a)  The  sanitary  map. 

(b)  Newspapers. 

(c)  Expositions  and  exhibits. 

(d)  Bulletins  and  circulars. 

(e)  Public  meetings. 

(f)  Churches. 

XIV.     DEALING  WITH  CITY  OFFICIALS. 

Co-operation  if  possible. 

Meet  opposition  by  a  showing  of  fact  and  overcome  oppo- 
sition by  publicity. 

XV.    THE  SURVEY  STAFF. 

(a)  A  competent  physician,  preferably  with  some  public 

health  training. 

(b)  A  public-spirited  and  competent  lawyer. 

(c)  Staff  of  paid  or  volunteer  inspectors  to  collect  data. 

(d)  A  practical  plumber,  or  better,  a  sanitary  engineer. 

(e)  Clerical  help  and  draftsman. 


THE  NEWS  CO..  NEWBURGH.  N.  Y. 


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